CAROLYN COLLINS PETERSEN

Carolyn Collins Petersen is an award-winning science writer with six books, 40 documentary scripts, and countless magazine articles to her credit. As a science outreach content producer and consultant, she works with various institutions as a science writer and technical editor for astronomy, astrophysics, and space science-related outreach projects. Her most notable recent projects include a script for a Mars documentary (in production), a series of scripts and voice-overs for "SpaceweatherFX", an MIT Haystack Observatory vodcast project, and exhibit writing for the Griffith Observatory exhibition program that opened in November, 2006, as well as the California Academy of Science's "California's Altered States" climate change exhibit that opened September 2008. Her current clients include Gemini Observatory, Subaru Observatory, and Software Bisque. On the web, Carolyn maintains TheSpacewriter.com, is a segment producer for AstroCast.TV and has been contributing to 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts throughout 2009.

Carolyn is vice-president of Colorado-based Loch Ness Productions, an innovative company specializing in creating cosmic content for astronomy and space-science related projects. The company's clients include more than 800 planetarium and science center facilities, plus private enterprises in software and publishing.

Carolyn served as Editor of SkyWatch magazine, Associate Editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, and Editor of Books and Products for Sky Publishing Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1997 through 2000. She shepherded the publication of Skywatch Magazine.

She is first author of Visions of the Cosmos, published by Cambridge University Press. Her co-author is John C. Brandt of the University of New Mexico.

She is also first author of HUBBLE VISION, published by Cambridge University Press in 1995 and 1998, co-written with Dr. John C. Brandt.

She co-edited (with J. Kelly Beatty and Andrew Chaikin) of The New Solar System, 4th Edition, published in 1998 by Sky Publishing Corporation and Cambridge University Press.

Carolyn worked eight years as a comet researcher and research associate with the Hubble Space Telescope's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado. She coordinated observations for the Ulysses Comet Watch project and worked with the Hubble Space Telescope's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph team. She graduated with a masters' degree in journalism and mass communications in 1996, with a minor in telecommunications engineering. Her thesis was on print media coverage of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Her reputation as a science documentary scriptwriter is built on more than two decades of experience creating presentations for the unique domed environment as well as for specialized exhibitions in science centers. She has written custom scripts for planetaria in Washington D.C., St. Louis (MO), Springfield (MA), Lincoln (NE), Chicago, and Cocoa (FL). Carolyn has taught workshops on planetarium script writing and science writing. She and Mark C. Petersen shared the First Prize for the video production based on the Loch Ness planetarium show HUBBLE: Report From Orbit, in the Casa de las Ciencias (La Coruña, Spain) Sixth Contest for Science Publications.

Carolyn won honorable mention in the 1995 Griffith Observatory/Hughes Aircraft Friends of the Observatory Writing Contest, for an article titled: Collisions, Cannibals, Starbursts, and Black Holes! (What are Galaxies Coming to?). She was the 1992 First Prize winner of the contest, with her article: Magellan At Venus

Her 1985 article for The Denver Post Empire Magazine, "The Lightning Makers" was selected as one of the 100 best science stories of that year. In 1988, she wrote Jupiter, for a children's book series called Exploration of Space published by Facts on File.

Carolyn is a member of the American Astronomical Society, its Division of Planetary Sciences, the National Association of Science Writers, and was elected to membership in Kappa Tau Alpha, the national journalism honorary, in 1993. She also served as the Publications Chair for the International Planetarium Society (1985-1990) and is an IPS Fellow. She is a former President of the Rocky Mountain Planetarium Association (1987-1989) and served as its first Newsletter Editor.

She regularly lectures on topics in astronomy and science outreach and the media at star parties, conferences, and by invitation to schools and universities, and aboard cruise ships.

Carolyn's bibliography.