3-2-1-Lift Off!
By Felicia Russell (MA '07)

Carolyn Collins Petersen wrote enough exhibit panels for the Griffith Observatory to fill a book.

When Carolyn Collins Petersen (MA '96) began writing exhibit copy for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, she quickly became known as VOTO to the design and observatory staff. VOTO, or "Voice of the Observatory," is the personification of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

Donning the mask of VOTO, Petersen wrote enough short snippets to fill a book. These distillations of complex concepts now fill placards throughout the Griffith Observatory and will continue to educate the public about space and astronomy for years to come.

"It made it a lot easier to take criticism because it wasn't me, it was VOTO," Petersen said. In a way, writing as VOTO was for Petersen like taking on another personality is for an actor, she said.

Petersen had never written an exhibit before joining the Griffith team in March 2005. After graduating from CU with a bachelor's degree in elementary education 1978, she said she worked as a reporter for The Denver Post until a round of layoffs left her jobless. She said she then returned to CU and her first love – space.

Petersen said she joined the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics to work on the Hubble Space Telescope while earning her master's degree in journalism. When Hubble began having problems with the optics, she said she was surprised by the negative media response and began taking notes, which she eventually turned into a book, "Hubble Vision."

Since then, she has written several more astronomy books, been a public speaker, editor at two magazines, developed museum exhibits and written scripts for and narrated science videos.

"It's not that I set out on this trail," Petersen said. "You just write about what you're interested in and pursue those projects." And sometimes those projects lead you to something new, she added.

Petersen's next project is a series of exhibit panels on climate change for the California Academy of Sciences, she said. Although the academy's researchers have already "predigested" a lot of the material for the panels, she said she has been working her way through a stack of books, scientific papers and the synthesis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes' Fourth Assessment Report.

One of the most challenging aspects of her work is maintaining distance from the material so she can adequately explain the concepts for someone with a fifth-grade reading level, she said. "I have hard word limits of 35 and 50 words to get very complex ideas across," Petersen said. "It can't be 500 words; it's got to be 35 well-chosen words." As the last line of defense before the panels are printed and mounted, a copy editor will weed out any jargon and overly complicated sentences that might confuse museum goers, she said.

When the Academy chose Petersen to write its climate change exhibit, she said she was told, "We don't need writers with ego. We need writers who can tell a story." She said that stepping into the figurative shoes of the observatory or museum gives her just the right perspective. www.thespacewriter.com