Last week I had my birthday, turning 35.. I don’t feel older at the moment. I still call myself low-mid 30’s

I’m feeling fit and strong, which is a good thing as I continue preparing for my black belt grading in June! I’m still doing the regular 5km run at Adcock Park, followed by 100 squat kicks, 100 pushups and 100 situps. To push myself, I’m then doing another lap, and then another 100 pushups. It’s feeling good – I’m feeling ready. I’m only doing it once a week at the moment but will be trying to increase it to twice a week in the next month or so. Finding time is the hard part!

The official “prep cycle” for the black belt grading starts in about a month – right after the Sydney All Styles tournament which is on March 7th. I’m really looking forward to getting the prep cycle underway. I’ve been training hard, and the prep cycle is going to be even harder. Bring it on!

From an Astronomy point of view, well, I haven’t really done much. I’ve been trying to motivate myself to get back out there with the Mars image a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it’s been cloudy since then, which really hasn’t helped. The 2010 CWAS “David Malin Awards” have just been announced, and hopefully trying to capture an image for that competition will inspire me to get out there more. I certainly don’t have anything worthy of submitting right now – I haven’t taken a single decent image in 6 months!

I’m motivated for IceInSpace though. With the IceInSpace Community Survey 2010 finishing up the other week, I’ve been busy analysing all the data and making plans for changes to IceInSpace to take us forward for the next 5 years. I have many lofty ideas! Pages and pages of them! I just hope I can get hold of enough of Terry’s time to implement my ideas

On the family front, it’s been very busy! Jacob started at a new school for year 5 – in an Opportunity Class at Gosford Primary School. So far it’s going really well and he’s enjoying it heaps. Abbey also started kindergarten this year! Our baby is now at school! Eliza started year 3 and got the teacher she wanted and the classmates she wanted! So far so good!

Jacob, Abbey and Eliza starting school in 2010

I guess that’s enough for today.. I’ve committed to try and update my blog more regularly this year, but finding the time is proving much more difficult than I imagined.

I’ll keep trying though and hopefully have more updates over the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading.

Well this has been a long time coming… It’s been over 4 months since my last planetary image!

A combination of bad weather, bad seeing and very low motivation for astrophotography (mainly the latter) has meant I just didn’t have my telescope out for literally 4+ months.

I’m trying to force myself back into it, and with Mars almost at opposition (although still very small at 14 arcseconds and very low in the north) I figured now is as good a time as any to get the scope out and take some images again.

So here is a very ugly Mars from Friday night in typically below average seeing and with the planet under 30deg in altitude.

Mars - 22nd Jan 2010

I didn’t really forget anything, but it did feel a bit clunkier – everything took a little longer to get going and be up and running.

But anyway, it’s a start. It’s ugly, but it’s Mars all the same. And hopefully the motivation can climb a little higher and encourage me to get the scope out again the next time it’s clear (it’s been cloudy since then :)).

Thanks for looking.

No, this is not a joke. This is not april fools day!

I setup my telescope last night, first time in 4 months, and I actually used it! I took some video data of Mars at around 12:30am-1:00am, and got up again this morning to image Saturn at 4:30am.

Wow it had been a while.. I didn’t forget anything but everything just took a little bit longer and felt a bit more clunky. The seeing wasn’t horrible, which was nice for a change. But it wasn’t good either.

Unfortunately fog this morning prevented any useful Saturn data – it was really dim even at 7.5fps, so I just captured 1 dim red channel and packed up. I couldn’t believe how high Saturn is already! I was looking for it lower on the horizon but it turned out to be just a star

Anyway I’ll process the Mars data later and see what comes of it.

Once I got into it, I was enjoying it enough – but it didn’t start out that way. At the start, I had the usual thoughts… “please be cloudy”, “please be horrible seeing” – anything to turn around and crawl back into bed.

But I fought through those feelings, and this morning I have that tired, gritty-eyes feeling that I remember.. LOL.

A few readers here may have also used IceInSpace from time to time, so this message is for you.

As IceInSpace continues to grow, it’s important for us to learn more about our great community – to see what makes you tick. We want to find out more about your interest in astronomy, the type of equipment you use and how often you use it, where and how you do your observing or imaging, and more.

We’re also very keen to learn more about how you use IceInSpace – how long you’ve been visiting, how often you visit, what sections you use the most, and what you want to see more of at IceInSpace.

We want to make sure we’re providing you with the right content, the right features and functionality, and ensure we provide you with what you need to get the most of our your IceInSpace experience.

To do all this, we’re undertaking our first major market research of our community – in the form of the IceInSpace Community Survey 2010. Your responses will help us make IceInSpace even better and continue to grow even stronger over the next 5 years.

The survey is 4 pages long, consists of 27 questions and should take you about 10 minutes to complete. Your participation in this research is completely voluntary - all questions are optional and you can withdraw from the survey at any point.

Your survey responses will be strictly confidential and data from this research will be reported only in the aggregate. Your information will be coded and will remain confidential.

If you have questions at any time about the survey, please Contact Us at IceInSpace. You can also post any thoughts or discussion about the survey in this thread on the IceInSpace Forum.

Thank you very much for your time and support. Please start with the survey now by clicking on the link below:

IceInSpace Community Survey 2010

Over 500 people have already completed the survey – so please add your weight to the market research so we can make IceInSpace even better.

Thanks

Over the 2009 Christmas Holidays, my family and I again headed up to Birubi Beach for a 7 night camping trip, after making a similar journey at the end of 2008. After beautiful weather last year, unfortunately this year we were subjected to terrible weather. Cloudy with not a hint of sunshine for 6 out of the 7 days.

On the last day we were there, my son Jacob and I headed out on the sand dunes with the Port Stephens 4WD company for their 3-hour shipwreck tour – taking in some sand boarding, the Sygna shipwreck, Tin City, a few other local attractions and the Tank Traps.

Click the images for a larger version.

Tank Traps on Stockton Beach Sand Dunes

The image above was taken with my Canon 40D and 24-105mm L IS lens. Please continue reading for more story and images.

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I was thankfully sent an email by someone this morning who recognised a photo on someone’s flickr stream as a crop of my Smiley Face Conjunction photo. The photo on flickr is called Clouds, and you can clearly see it’s a crop of my image.

I posted a comment demanding that the photo be removed, but the user deleted my comment and blocked me from posting further comments. I also sent them an email demanding it be removed. I have reported the copyright infringement to the Yahoo Copyright Infringement people, and hopefully they will do something about it.

I’m very disappointed and angered that someone would do this. I wonder what other photos on this users stream are stolen!?

Have you ever had this done to you? What other action can you take?

If you’re a member on flickr and you’re as outraged as me, perhaps consider leaving a negative comment. It will probably get deleted but it might help all the same.

Hi all

Back in April 2009 over the Easter Long Weekend, my family and I headed out to Dubbo for a couple of night camping trip. The main purpose of the holiday was to visit the Dubbo Zoo.

It was a pretty ordinary holiday in the end, raining almost all the time and we got 2 flat tyres on the bikes that we hired to ride around the zoo!

Click each image to see a larger version.

Majestic Tiger

Anyway I hope you enjoy this selection of photos from Dubbo Zoo.

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Back in February 2009, myself and 2 friends (Andrew Catsaitis and Andrew Murrell) met up at Sommersby Falls on the Central Coast of NSW for a photo expedition after a lot of heavy rain in recent days.

Only a month earlier, the three of us were again at Sommersby Falls, but this photo session was much better – the light was brilliant, the falls were flowing with much more water after a few days of heavy rain, and it even started raining heavily on us while we were there. It made for some tricky shots at times, trying to juggle the umbrella to keep the camera dry, while framing and focusing and at times, being almost knee deep in water!

Somersby Falls

For some reason I didn’t finish processing these at the time, and now, 10 months later, I finally made the time to finish processing these – and I’m glad I did. These are my best ever photos of Sommersby Falls.

Over the Ledge

In the next day or two, my favourites from the set will be available to purchase on RedBubble. Please contact me if what you’re looking for isn’t there, or if you need a digital file.

Bottom Falls Cascade

Please continue on to check out all 24 photos, and click on each image to see a larger less compressed version.

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Hi all

When it comes to the end of another year, it always feels like a good time to reflect on the previous 12 months – to think about what you’ve achieved, what you didn’t achieve, assess the goals you had set for yourself, and start thinking about your goals for the next year.

At the beginning of the year, I set myself some goals for 2009, and it’s interesting to score myself now. Continue reading to see how I went and what I need to change in 2010.

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On the morning of the 17th September 2009, I was headed out to Terrigal beach on a lovely clear pre-dawn morning to photograph the conjunction of the Moon and Venus.

When the sky became too bright for the conjunction, I took advantage of the lovely colours of the dawn to capture some images of the sunrise and a few impromptu waterfalls as large waves crashed over the rock ledges near by.

Terrigal Sunrise. Click image to see a larger version.

The pre-dawn colours were magnificent, as they reflected off the surface water on the rock ledges.

Dawn Waterfall Colours. Click image for a larger version.

Please continue reading to see the rest of the images from the session.

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