News and Events for Nantucket Island
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Sundial or Sun d’Isle, as so cleverly named and crafted by Robert A. diCurcio (Bob), was designed as a piece of functional art and commissioned for the Maria Mitchell Association in 1989. The sundial is designed based on the latitude (41 degrees, […]
The Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) biological collections’ oldest specimen is the Wood Fern (pictured above). Maria Louisa Owen, an expert in mosses and moss-like plants, collected this fern in 1879. This was during the height of “Pteridomania” – also known as the Victo- rian fern craze – which was sweeping […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Fangs. The photo to the right is a close up of a tarantula – or a purseweb spider – hiding out in its tubular home, and giving the camera a toothy grin. Nantucket is home to a few unusual spiders, including tarantulas, […]
by Amy Jenness Maria Mitchell spent the first 11 years of her adulthood living a quiet life on Nantucket, first as a teacher and then as librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum. But that changed on a clear October night in 1847 when she saw a comet through her telescope and […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Among the historic gray-shingled houses of Vestal Street and hidden in the gardens of the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman House Natural Science Museum, sits a whale skull found thirty years ago at Cisco Beach. The bone belongs to a right whale: an […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ The story of the orphan tropical fish sounds like it could be the nautical version of “Annie,” or a spin off of “Finding Dory,” but the story of the orphan tropical fish hinges on the theme of displacement and is an example […]
