Categories: Astronomy

Celebrate the Holidays, From Space!

Zooniverse's Advent Calendar.

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Its December, so many people are getting ready to celebrate … something, be it Hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Solstice, National Pie Day (today!), Emily Dickinson’s birthday (Dec. 10) or National Wear Plunger on Your Head Day (Dec. 18), or just being able to get together with family or having some time off work.

To help you celebrate, there are lots of online spacey goodies. The Zooniverse started the Zooniverse Advent Calendar, similar to the one-a-day-chocolate-treat calendars we all love, but this calendar includes a surprise each day such as special images, downloads and even a couple of very big pieces of news (since no one has figured out how to send chocolate over the web, yet.) Click this link, or the top image to access, as the calendar is now operational.

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Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog has her own advent calendar with image treats, and Door Number 1 is now open! Emily’s calendar goes all the way to the New Year, which is even better for more great images.

And there’s more!

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has their third annual Advent Calendar of Hubble Pictures.

Love Hubble, and want to send space-themed holiday cards? The folks from the Hubble Space Telescope have a great collection of beautiful cards you can download, and send. The cards are designed to be printed out at photo stores or online photo labs, though you can also use a home printer.

A Chandra e-card.

Looking for E-cards? The Chandra website has a great selection of all-occasion cards to send, and here, specifically, is a link to their winter holiday cards.

If you’d like to send an e-card specifically to the astronauts on board the International Space Station, NASA has a website just for you. NASA even encourages you to send a holiday Tweet to any of their astronauts.

SpaceWeather.com has a selection of e-cards, too.

If you are looking for holiday gift ideas with a space or astronomy theme, AmericaSpace has some ideas, Space Center Houston has an idea for that special space enthusiast on your list, The Space Store is an obvious place to look for space-related holiday gifts, and the National Geographic Store has a space section, too. Of course, just searching for “astronomy” on sites like Amazon.com will provide a boatload of ideas.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/