This is a glowing hunk of rock, lit from within.
The rock was found in the Kelly Mine in Magadela, New Mexico. Smithsonite is a form of zinc carbonate, or zinc spar, that’s formed a large crystal mass, which is not what zinc carbonate usually does.
In the early 1800s, James Smithson identified the mineral as something different from zinc silicate (until then, they were both called calamine, not to be confused with the itch cream). He’s the same guy the Smithsonian Museums were named for. He didn’t name the rock after himself – that happened 30 years later, thanks to a French geologist named François Sulpice Beudant who thought the stuff should probably bear the name of the guy who discovered it wasn’t something else, but was its own thing.
People mine it for zinc, sometimes, and a yellowish variety rich in cadmium is commonly called “turkey fat ore.”