See the Sunrise Daily at Kennedy Space Center

By Nancy Atkinson - June 25, 2010 at 9:04 AM UTC | Site News
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Sunrises are beautiful almost any place in the world, but for some reason first light every morning over Central Florida is almost always breathtaking. Then, if you add into the mix a sunrise over Kennedy Space Center -- America's Spaceport -- any space geek will likely melt with delight. Thanks to Jen Scheer, a shuttle technician at KSC, anyone can see the sunrise over the space center almost every day. Jen takes tons of images at KSC and shares them via Twitter (follow her

@flyingjenny

) and

her Flickr page

, but her specialty is taking a daily picture or two of the sunrise. "I've been taking sunrise pics since 2006," Jen told me, "but only sporadically until early January of this year. That's when I began stepping it up a bit, and it became a daily thing."

Some of the images have some interesting landmarks or space-related features in them, too, such as the image above, or the one below that includes the Vertical Processing Facility which housed many parts of Hubble at one time, as well as Chandra and others. This image is especially poignant as that building was recently torn down. "In some of my sunrise pics, you can see the progression of it being dismantled," Jen said. [caption id="attachment_67263" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="'Serene' by Jen Scheer. The building on the left is the Vertical Processing Facility, which is now demolished. "]

[/caption] But don't wait very long to take advantage of Jen's marvelous photography. With the shuttle program ending soon, Jen's job will be eliminated and she likely will not be working at KSC much longer. "We all love the shuttle program and will be very sad to see it come to an end," Jen said. (Read our previous article, "

Tough Times Could Be Ahead for Kennedy Space Center.

") "There are a lot of people who have no idea what they are going to do when it is all over. I'm looking into some possibilities, but we'll just have to see how everything turns out."

As an avid supporter of spaceflight, Jen also started the

Space Tweep Society,

an organization with a mission to "promote enthusiasm for all things space and to unite those inside the space industry with those who are outside looking in." Check out the website for how you can get involved.

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