A team of researchers working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has successfully characterized a crystal structure of a californium metallocene. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their carefully orchestrated process and the characteristics of the crystal structure they created. Julie Niklas and Henry La Pierre with the Georgia Institute of Technology, give an overview of the history of actinide metallocene study and outline the work done by the team in New Mexico in a News and Views piece published in the same journal issue.