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

My wife will tell you – I don’t get into hobbies lightly. I become engrossed in them, obsessed It becomes a passion, not just a hobby.

And so it was when in June 2004, I decided that I was going to start pursuing my interest in Astronomy and take it up as a hobby. Now, 5 years later – wow, what a journey it has been!

Rainbow of Comet McNaught. One of the major highlights of my time in Astronomy.

Writing this article has been quite a trip down memory lane.

Continue reading to find out how it all began, the ups and downs along the way, and my plans for the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

IceInSpace celebrated a fantastic milestone this week – reaching 5000 registered members.

While the number itself doesn’t mean a lot, it’s what it shows that’s the most important. It shows that IceInSpace is doing something right. It’s continuing to grow (at a rate of over 1000 new members every year), it’s continuing to stay current and relevant, and it’s continuing to provide a great service to amateur astronomy and star gazers in Australia, New Zealand and across the world.

Whilst IceInSpace still primarily focus on Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, and the majority of our members are Australian, increasingly the visitors and members are coming from outside Australia – especially North America and Europe. It shows IceInSpace have something worth coming for – the rich and diverse content and the friendly and helpful nature.

I’ve written more on IceInSpace – you can read it here:

IceInSpace Reaches 5000 Member Milestone

Thanks

Hi all

Over 4 years ago when IceInSpace was first created, it was originally my little home on the internet – a place to upload my images and share and write about my experiences in astronomy. It soon grew into a community site for amateur astronomers in Australia and across the world. I still kept my personal image gallery on IceInSpace but it always bothered me that it wasn’t really the right place for it anymore. 

Earlier this year, I decided it was finally time to completely separate my personal work from IceInSpace and create a new site specifically dedicated to my thoughts and my images – and here it is, mikesalway.com.au.

It’s been a long time coming – I started it back in April 2008 but have only found time to work on it in shorts bursts, before being dragged off to do more work on IceInSpace, or just being able to find the time outside of real work and family life.

I chose to use WordPress as the main site framework and Coppermine as the Gallery system. They have a reasonable level of integration for what I need it for, and sticking with Coppermine meant I didn’t need to upload all of my old images into a new gallery system. I went with WordPress as it’s easy to add new content to after the initial setup phase.

So what am I going to use this site for? At this stage i’m not really sure how it’s going to evolve. Without a doubt, as a minimum all of my new images, articles and reviews will be uploaded here. Beyond that – who knows. I’ll be feeding my blog with my thoughts about a wide range of topics, not just astronomy, so hopefully there’ll be always something interesting enough for you to bookmark mikesalway.com.au and to check back regularly. If you want to keep up-to-date automatically, you can subscribe to the RSS feed which will display any new posts in your feed reader.

I’d started writing posts many months ago while development of the site was ongoing, so you can see previous posts by using the archives links on the right. The articles and reviews I’ve written can be found in the articles and reviews pages, and you can find out more about me at the About page. All of my images can be found in the image gallery, though I still need to make a few minor changes and enhancements to the gallery section. Just as a heads-up, when you click on the image thumbnail, the pop-up image has a bunch of icons across the top to see the larger version, comment on or rate the image or to see additional information.

Like any blog, you can search for content, make comments to the articles or posts, and you can also make comments about any images in the Gallery section. If you know of any great astronomy or photography-related blogs or homepages, please contact me and I can add them to the list on the right-side of the page.

I want to improve this site and am happy to take on-board your feedback and suggestions – things you like, things you don’t like, things you’d like to see or site-related issues/problems. Contact me with your ideas! There are a few minor issues rendering the site in Internet Explorer, so please have patience while I get time to fix them. I’d recommend using Firefox as a browser, or even giving Google Chrome a try (although it’s still beta, my thoughts here).

I’d love to hear from you about anything – questions, comments or even just to say hi. Please use Contact page to send me an email.

If you like what you see here, I’d be grateful if you could add a link to MikeSalway.com.au to your sites, blogs and galleries to help people find my new personal site.

Thanks for reading!