Sagan Day Essays

By Nancy Atkinson - November 7, 2010 at 7:48 AM UTC | Site News
sagan1.jpg

[/caption]

Tuesday (11/09) is Carl Sagan Day -- a chance to remember the legacy of one of the great spokespersons for science. The folks over at the

Kepler spacecraft website held an essay contest,

inviting the public to submit writings inspired by the imagery that Sagan created in his allegory of The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean. (Regrettably, I didn't write about this beforehand to give Universe Today readers a heads-up.) The essays -- which also include guest essays by notables such as Jill Tartar and Seth Shostak -- are now available to read, and are all well worth the trip over to the

Kepler website

, especially if Sagan had an impact on your thought processes (as he did on mine). I hope you'll check it out.

By the way, I am currently attending a joint meeting of the National Association of Science Writers ad the

Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

at Yale University and thus will not have the opportunity to post many articles the next couple of days. But the rest of the UT team will work to keep you updated on the news. While here, I'll have the chance to talk with some astronomers and cosmologists, and have already met a lot of great and wonderful writers.

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