Podcast: Optical Astronomy

By Nancy Atkinson - April 17, 2009 12:38 PM UTC | Observing

Optical astronomy; now this is the kind of astronomy a human being was born to do. In fact, until the last century, this was the only kind of astronomy anybody ever did. Now we've got the whole electromagnetic spectrum to explore, but our heart still belongs to optical astronomy. Of course, with bigger telescopes, better optics and more sensitive detectors, even optical astronomy has come a long way.

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Infrared Astronomy- Transcript and show notes.

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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