National Geographic Society

🎉 Congratulations to the 2024 Fulbright-National Geographic Award recipients: 🎉 • Artis Henderson; conservation journalist; Australia • Chelsea McMaster; ceramic artist; Antigua and Barbuda • Jamil Wilson; marine biology educator and researcher; Papua New Guinea • Konstantine Vlasis; environmental composer and audio storyteller; Iceland • Sateesh Venkatesh; conservation behaviorist; Sri Lanka These newly-named #NatGeoExplorers are carrying out projects around the world that support the conservation of our planet’s land and oceans to build a more sustainable future, and engage local communities to foster cross-cultural dialogue. Explore more about their inspiring work: https://lnkd.in/dacXBp56 Photos: Artis Henderson courtesy of Artis Henderson (1); Chelsea McMaster by Daeun Lim (2); Jamil Wilson by Karl Huggins (3); Konstantine Vlasis by Marcus Neudigate (4); Sateesh Venkatesh by Sriyantha Janaka (5) The Fulbright Program 

What was the universe like before the Big Bang? 🌌 For starters, it was darker, quieter and filled mainly with hydrogen. Cosmologist and #NatGeoExplorer Cynthia Chiang (pictured) has spent the last few years listening for sounds from these “cosmic dark ages,” and the journey has taken her to the ends of the earth. “If we want to study any part of the universe’s history, we can tune into the right wavelength,” Chiang says. She engineers radio telescopes that tune into wavelengths emitted by hydrogen from the distant past, far from Earth. Chiang and her team at McGill University haul these telescopes to the most remote and quiet corners of the world to avoid the noise of humanity, from a remote island in the Southern Indian Ocean to the Canadian High Arctic. Explore more at: https://lnkd.in/ewt2gTdw. Photo by Nivek Ghazi

What does it take to develop a comprehensive story about women surfing that goes beyond the boundaries of a sports story? 🏄♀️🌊 Photographer and #NatGeoExplorer Malin Fezehai is looking beyond the waves to reframe the dominant narrative about surfing from a decolonized point of view. “I want to focus on the human experience of choosing a life path connected to the ocean, as told from a female perspective,” she says. Fezehai is documenting the stories of women like Flora Christin Butarbutar (pictured). Butarbutar barely knew how to swim when she began surfing eight years ago, but with committed self-determination, became Indonesia’s first female competitive longboarder. Photo by Malin Fezehai

What’s beneath the gentle waters of South Florida’s mangroves? Nat Geo Young Explorer Gabriela Tejeda paints a colorful story of what lies below in an effort to conserve these vital forests and understand their role in supporting a complex underwater ecosystem. “Here, a Spiny Sea Star aka Florida Common Sea Star (Echinaster Sentus) rests amongst the roots of a Red Mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) tree. The sea-star rests on a bed of green algae, surrounded by red cotton candy algae, anemones, tube-worms and sponges growing on the mangrove roots.” Photo by Gabriela Tejeda #WorldMangroveDay

Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park is one of the most biodiverse forests on the planet. It protects about 1.1 million hectares of Amazon rainforest and shows how biodiversity can thrive when left untouched. This pristine setting was the perfect place for photographer and #NatGeoExplorer Thomas Peschak to capture the behaviors of the animals in the wild, like the yellow-spotted river turtle, a trio of hoatzins and a red howler monkey and their deep connections to the Amazonian waterways. Peschak is documenting the rainforest from its “aquatic spiderweb” of giant rivers with hundreds of tributaries and thousands of streams. This work is part of the National Geographic and ROLEX #PerpetualPlanet Amazon Expedition — a multi-year science and storytelling exploration of the Amazon River basin to further our understanding of this intricate freshwater system and advance solutions to ensure its protection. Explore more: https://lnkd.in/d6x_R9jP. Photos by Thomas Peschak

Dancing between reality and fantasy, #NatGeoExplorer Sutirtha Chatterjee’s photographic project “The Mysterious Forest” tells the story of a lost boy who meets a "pari," or spirit, and is written by siblings and students Rima and Ashraful, who live with visual disabilities. Collaborating with Rima and Ashraful, Chatterjee captures the “fears, hopes and dreams of adolescents living with visual disabilities in West Bengal, India.” The pictures were then converted into tactile prints as a way for blind people to touch and experience the photographs, seen here (photo 3). “People living with visual disabilities have been historically excluded, especially in visual arts. This project aims to include these voices, attempting to challenge stereotypes of blindness and motivate people to understand and empathize better through the siblings’ stories.” Pictured here, Ashraful enacting the character of the “lost boy” in Erenda village of West Bengal, India (1); Rima enacting the character of the “pari” (2); Ashraful interacting with a tactile print at his home in Erenda village of West Bengal, India (3); Rima enacting the character of the “pari” photographed by Ashraful (4). Photos by Sutirtha Chatterjee (1 and 2), Supratim Chatterjee (3) and Ashraful Molla (4) #DisabilityPrideMonth

Did you catch that springtime total solar eclipse? If not, you’ll have to wait another 20 years for the next one visible from the contiguous United States. In the meantime, physicist, inventor and #NatGeoExplorer Ved Chirayath captured this image of the moon passing over the sun in Goldthwaite, Texas, this past April. The moon appeared to tuck neatly over the sun resulting in 100% totality in many parts of North America — from Mexico to Maine. Photo by Ved Chirayath #InternationalMoonDay #NationalMoonDay

Are you feeling the heat? ☀️ What we learn about the sun depends on what kind of light wavelength we use to observe it. Our home star formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dusty cloud of gas collapsed and began to generate energy. Composed of hot, electrified gas called plasma, the sun accounts for 99.86% of the mass of the solar system. It’s shown here as a composite of three images taken in 2015, soon after its solar maximum. This poster was supported by the National Geographic Society and appeared as a supplement to National Geographic magazine’s September 2021 issue.

“It was unbelievable. I have seen auroras from many countries in both hemispheres, but never expected to see it from this latitude overhead,” #NatGeoExplorer Babak Tafreshi says of his experience with the aurora borealis seen from Maine, and many other parts of the globe, in May 2024. In a way, the event highlighted what Tafreshi has been working to communicate through his visual work: No matter where on Earth people are, they look up at the same sky. As a visual storyteller and astronomer, Tafreshi’s work pays homage to humans’ shared, eternal roof. Take a deeper look how: https://lnkd.in/eXh-MZhB. Photo by Babak Tafreshi

Today’s #WorldChimpanzeeDay marks the anniversary of when #JaneGoodall first arrived in what is now Tanzania's Gombe National Park! She first arrived at her field site 64 years ago, launching her journey as the conservationist, scientist and humanitarian whose groundbreaking discoveries shaped our understanding of chimpanzees and their conservation. Photo by Vanne Goodall