Hi. My name is Carolyn Collins Petersen. Those of you have read through my Web site, called The Henrietta Leavitt Flat Screen Space Theater have already figured out that my interests lie in astronomy, space science, space travel, and science fiction. I’m a science writer, specializing in those subjects through books, articles, planetarium shows, a video or two, and whatever else gets me paid to write about them.

Currently I’m working on a new book for Cambridge University Press (no I can’t talk about it yet), and a script for a program about Hubble Space Telescope. And some other things that float to the top of my desk when necessary.

I thought I’d form this WeBLog to air my thoughts out on any subjects (not just the ones listed above, necessarily), and sometimes answer questions that I get from people through the Web site.

So, why start a Blog? Lots of people who have them apparently have that question of themselves, too. I was inspired by Wil Wheaton’s Blog called Wil Wheaton Dot Net. What impresses me about Wil is his willingness to open his thoughts to the rest of us, knowing full well that as a member of the acting community (and due to his work in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Stand By Me”) he’s already in the public eye — and apparently dealing with it pretty well.

Anyway, I enjoy reading Wil’s thoughts, his ramblings from Inside the Entertainment Machine (emphasis my own).

So, here I am, adding to the bandwidth — sort of using this public way of working through creative blocks (when I hit them) and clearing my mind of all but the essentials that I need to keep focused on the writing project at hand.

Some correspondents have asked me how I write planetarium shows. To be sure, it’s not like writing a book, although I certainly start out with the same source material. For example, I once was asked to write a show about the Moon for 3rd graders. It had to fulfill a certain set of educational standards for kids that age, but beyond that, the approach was up to me. So, I decided to look at the Moon from the viewpoint of a cat — figuring it would give me an easy way to explain some elementary facts about Earth’s nearest neighbor. It was fun to do — and the story of a little cat guy learning about something that humans figure most cats could care less about — well let’s just say that the story was an excellent framework to hang all the info on, and 12 years later, the show is still selling like hotcakes from Loch Ness Productions (at www.lochness.com).

That one was whimsical. Others have been straight documentary, or docu-drama.

Books, on the other hand, are a slog. Hubble Vision, written in 1995 and revised in 1998, just about needed a road map to keep all the data and images straight. As I work on my new book I’m databasing all the images, press releases, chats with scientists, etc. in ACCESS so that I can keep things a bit more orderly. Now I know why writers (the ones who can afford it) have assistants!

Articles — well, articles remind me of the old Mark Twain saying (paraphrased): “Please excuse the long letter, I didn’t have time to write you a short one.”