Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield returns home today from his 5-month stay on the International Space Station. But I knew him BEFORE he became such an internet sensation, with all his tweeting and videos and complete awesomeness during his Expedition 34/35. Although I had interviewed him several times before this picture was taken on February 24, 2011, here’s a picture of the day I actually got to meet him in person. I was attending the launch of STS-133 at Kennedy Space Center, and had just come back inside the KSC press center when, there he was.

It was such a thrill to meet him, but all I can say about this picture is that it was a bad hair day for me, but a good mustache day for Chris.

Fun fact: the person who took the picture was astronaut Kent Rominger, and he was nice enough to actually take 2 pictures when he noticed my eyes were closed on the first shot. (sorry, I’m not posting that one; it’s too embarrassing.)

But here’s a great shot of the launch by my friend and photographer Alan Walters:

This great video from the Symphony of Science project provides the entire history of us.

Thanks to one of our readers from Universe Today, Rick Ellis, for sharing his e-Postcard for the holiday! In the northern hemisphere, may your longer nights always be star-filled. In the southern hemisphere, as Neil de Grasse Tyson said on Twitter, Happy Spring Equinox to the 15% of all humans and 100% of free penguins who live down under.

I hope when future generations look back at this time in history, or if an alien civilization ever found evidence of life on Earth, this is what they’d see. All anyone ever really wants is to be happy, and sometimes dancing is the only way to express it.

This was featured on today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. You can find more information about this crazy dancing guy at WhereTheHellIsMatt.com

I often drive through Iowa, and have taken the opportunity to see a couple of unusual sights in the state. I previously wrote about seeing the Field of Dreams movie site, and I had also heard there was a small memorial near Clear Lake, Iowa at the site of where young rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. So last fall, I followed some rather cryptic directions I found on the internet and was able to find it, hidden in a corn field. It literally is out in the middle of nowhere. The only way I could tell I had found the right place was that there was a set of huge steel Wayfarer-style glasses along the road, the kind Buddy Holly was known for wearing. But to see the crash site, you have to walk along a fence through a corn field.

Approaching the crash site.

I was there on a Sunday afternoon, and no other cars were there so I felt a little uneasy, but figured since I had come all this way I wasn’t going to turn back. I walked for quite a ways along the fence, until I finally saw something up ahead.

Memorial to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.

Memorial to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper near Clear Lake, Iowa.

Memorial for the pilot of the plane, Roger Peterson.

Odd stuff left by fans.

I’ve heard that fans of Holly, Valens and Bopper from around the world have visited the site; many leave all kinds of memorabilia at the crash site — pairs of glasses, necklaces, business cards, notes, and flowers. After days of recent rains, it was all kind of a mess. The metal memorial for the three musicians was placed in 1990, and a marker honoring the pilot was put up in 2009.

Of course, the deaths of the three budding musicians happened before I was born, but it seems I heard about the their deaths every year on the anniversary, as I grew up near Fargo, ND/Moorhead, MN, where the musicians were headed for their next gig. And then there was that song written by Don McLean, “American Pie,” that I grew up listening to that has the line, “the day the music died.” And who doesn’t love the movie “La Bamba?”

The day I was there was a beautiful warm fall day, and as I said, no one else was there and it was very quiet. The only unusual thing was that a mourning dove sat on the ground near the memorial and didn’t fly away or move, even when I came close to it.

If you’d like to visit the crash site, here are my directions and a map. Remember, the memorial is on private property.

From Interstate 35
Take exit 197 and go west.
You’ll be on 300th Street. Turn right (north) onto Grouse Avenue (S28). Take a right (east) onto 310th Street, then a left (north) onto Gull Avenue. You’ll pass a farm on your left, and then see the big set of glasses. You’ll have to park along the side of the road and walk along the fence line past the glasses to the crash site.

As I wrote in a recent article on Universe Today: “The Royal Observatory Greenwich in the UK was the perfect setting to announce the winners of this year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, and I was privileged to be in attendance at the ceremony…”

Yes, I was really in London and was invited to Greenwich and the Royal Observatory for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards ceremony in September! The video above is from Will Gater and the BBC Sky and Night Magazine, and as evidence that I was really there, at :59 seconds into the video, you’ll see me hob-nobbing with astronomers and folks from the observatory and museum complex.

If you’ve visited my blog before, you will have noticed the Astronomy Photographer of the Year pictures near the top right side. This competition started in 2009 for the International Year of Astronomy. It was so popular that the organizers and sponsors decided to do it again this year, and now it seems like it will be an annual event.

The images are stunning! To see all the winning astronomy pictures in the six categories, see the Royal Observatory Greenwich website, or you can see all the images submitted on the Flickr Astronomy Photographer of the Year page. And if you live in the UK or visit there soon, you can see an exhibit of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners at the ROG from now until February 27, 2011.

It was by complete coincidence that I was in London on the same day as the APOTY awards night, but I’m so glad I was able to be there. The ROG is a must-see destination for any astronomy enthusiast, and is a wonderful location that is full of history, beauty and hands-on learning. There you can straddle the Prime Meridian, see early telescopes and time pieces and look across the same beautiful vistas that early British astronomers saw from the hilltop home of the observatory.

Thanks to Will Gater for the video, and to Paul Sutherland for making sure I was invited to the ceremony!

Here are some pictures from my visit there:

View from Maritime museum looking up towards the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Up by the ROG, with Greenwich and London in the background.

Standing on the Prime Meridian!

Again, standing on the Prime Meridian.

ROG's planetarium.

The ROG.

The working 28-inch refracting telescope at ROG -- the largest in Britain and the 7th largest in the world.

An old hunk of the early solar system: a very touchable piece of the iron and nickel Gibson meteorite that was found in Africa

Nice to see my two pals, Phil Plait and Chris Lintott are in such close proximity in the book section at the ROG gift shop!

ROG building -- 'Newton' is engraved above the middle section of windows.

A beautiful and historic setting for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year ceremony.

The runner-up winner in the young astronomer category was taken by 13-year-old Laurent V. Joli-Coeur from Canada, who was also at the ceremony. He is one stage with the ROG's public astronomer, Marek Kukula, and Dallas Campbell, from the BBC's 'Bang Goes the Theory.

The view of London at night across the Thames.

Fittingly, the boat that brought me back to London was named the “Meteor Clipper!”

It was a great evening, and a great experience to be at the Royal Observatory.

The ROG website also has a plethora of tips for how to take astrophotos.
And if want more than just images, the ROG online shop has some items for sale from this year’s winners.

I’m getting some new visitors to my blog today, thanks to the folks at Astronomy Picture of the Day (otherwise known as APOD) who featured a picture that I took back in March of space shuttle Discovery rolling out the launchpad at midnight, and the Xenon lights shining on the shuttle stack created a unique silhouette shadow up in the wispy clouds. I actually think some of the other pictures of the event turned out better, but this one is the easiest to see the effect. If you want to see more of these images and the story of how it happened, see my post, “Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt, the Shuttle is Gorgeous.”

Thanks for visiting! To see where I do my real work, head on over to Universe Today, 365 Days of Astronomy, and the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcasts.

And if you don’t already, you need to visit APOD every day! Thanks again to Robert Nemeroff and Jerry Bonnell for featuring my image on APOD and giving me one of the biggest thrills of my career!

This is Iowa.

We drive through the Hawkeye State quite often and had always talked about stopping at the Field of Dreams movie site near Dyersville. We finally went there, and eerily, it looks exactly like it does in the movie. But really, it’s pretty cool: the big white farmhouse, the meticulous baseball field edged by a field of corn, and although there were probably 25-50 visitors wandering around on a nondescript Sunday afternoon, there was an air of quiet and – almost – reverence. It really felt like Shoeless Joe or Moonlight Graham could show up at any moment.

But the only voices we heard were the chatter between parents and children having a game of catch.

Field of Dreams.

Being relatively ardent baseball fans, Field of Dreams is a movie we have watched often. And even though I can quote most of the movie and know each scene, I can never get through it without shedding a few tears. In it, life equals baseball, even though the movie really isn’t about sports. The movie is about nostalgia, the importance of family, yearning to make things right, realizing the wisdom of children, and it is another one of those mythological quests that we all seem to identify with.

The Field.

Stepping up to the crushed rock that outlines the field, we paused a bit, thinking of young Archie Graham’s sacrifice. And heading out into the cornfield (an experience not to be missed!), you really do wonder where you’ll end up!

The Field of Dreams cornfield.

Being a farmer’s daughter, the first thing I noticed about the cornfield was the meticulous way it is planted. The easiest way to plant it would have been to just drive the tractor and planter around the periphery of the outfield. But, instead, the corn is planted precisely so that the rows emanate out, so that visitors can walk directly down the rows and disappear (if you are short enough….)

The house.

The Field of Dreams movie site website says the field was built in four days back in 1988 (is the movie really that old??) “and since then, it has become so much more than just a field…. Located at the intersection of fantasy and reality, it’s a living piece of movie history where tens of thousands of people each year come to have a game of catch, to hit a few balls or just spend time with the people they love – the real message of the hit movie.”

But the house, the baseball field and the 193 acre property is for sale. $5.4 million is the asking price. So far, the family who owns the farm (and they owned it when the movie was filmed) hasn’t had any offers.

I have to say, being there was a very satisfying experience.

But then there’s another way of looking at it. Noted baseball writer Roger Angell had this to say about the movie:

“The stuff about the connection between baseball and American life, the Field of Dreams thing, gives me a pain. I hated that movie. It’s mostly fake. You look back into the meaning of old-time baseball, and really in the early days it was full of roughnecks and drunks. They beat up the umpires and played near saloons. In Fields of Dreams there’s a line at the end that says the game of baseball was good when America was good, and they’re talking about the time of the biggest race riots in the country and Prohibition. What is that? That dreaminess, I really hated that.”

Well, reality isn’t always all its cracked up to be…

Driving away from the Field of Dreams.

“I lived and worked on the Moon. I called the Moon home for three days of my life.” — Apollo 17 Astronaut Gene Cernan

Those words from Gene Cernan have been floating around in my mind the past few days. Although my experiences the past two months were nothing like Cernan’s, I think I can kind of understand how he felt. I have now lived and worked on the Space Coast and at Kennedy Space Center. I called Florida my home for two months of my life. But now I’m heading home.

As you’re reading this you’re probably shouting, “What! Why is she leaving? There is a shuttle launch in 5 days!” Yeah, yeah, I know. But my family would like me back home, and I had to make the decision over two weeks ago to make arrangements to try and stay or come home, and at that time Discovery’s launch was looking iffy at best because of the stuck helium valve. So, I’ll watch the launch from home, but my heart will be at KSC.

But I had some amazing experiences in Florida. I saw three launches (space shuttle Endeavour, Atlas with SDO and Delta with GOES-P), and had the opportunity to do and experience more than I ever could have imagined. I was in space geek heaven.

I won’t say “goodbye” because I hope to be back, so I’ll just say “so long.”

Panoramic view of KSC launchpads. Image: Nancy Atkinson

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases, it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams ….
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth…”
—John Keats

I love that poem by John Keats, but if he had been able to see a space shuttle launch, he might have changed those last couple of lines to something like, “Every day, we labor so that humanity can soar out into the Cosmos.”

And that is what the technicians and specialists who work with the space shuttles at Kennedy Space Center do. Every day.

Last week, I had the chance to go ON launchpad 39A and see space shuttle Discovery up close, so close that I didn’t have to use full zoom on my camera to get the shot, above, of the orbiter’s cockpit area. Other journalists told me the press hadn’t been allowed that close to a shuttle on the pad for years, and so I feel particularly lucky to have had that opportunity. We weren’t told just how close the KSC PAO folks were going to take us, so as we drove closer and closer, we didn’t say a word — we just looked at each other with wide eyes and kept our mouths shut, hoping beyond hope that we’d get as far up on the pad as we did. Here are some more shots from that day:

Nancy on pad 39A with Discovery. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com)

The shuttles truly are things of beauty, and having the opportunity to see two of the fleet up close — I saw Endeavour from just behind the fence in February and recently being directly on the pad with Discovery, their splendor is now imprinted indelibly on my mind. These orbiters have been a part of human spaceflight for nearly 30 years, and they will never “pass into nothingness,” — their history and stories will always be a major chapter in the legacy of our travels to space.

While everyone else is taking pictures, Nancy just stares in wonder. Image: Ken Kremer

It’s almost hard to believe that there are only four, possibly five shuttle flights remaining. Here on the Space Coast there have been lots of conversations about possible extensions to the shuttle program. I used to think it was time to move on to other vehicles and other destinations, and but now I’m not so sure. I don’t know if my thinking has changed because of the current uncertainty of the future of human spaceflight with Constellation potentially being canceled, or if just seeing a launch, viewing these magnificent orbiters up close and meeting some of the people who work daily with the shuttles has actually shifted my views.

There I said it. Deep down, I really want the space shuttles to keep flying. It just seems like they have a lot more life left in them.

Discovery, with the payload for STS-131 secured in the Rotating Service Structure. Image: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com)

Thanks to Alan Walters and Ken Kremer for sharing their pictures