Celebrate the Holidays, From Space!

By Nancy Atkinson - December 1, 2010 at 2:59 PM UTC | Space Exploration
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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.

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.

[caption id="attachment_80992" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="A Chandra e-card. "]

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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 Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com