Blogging About Stars

Well, so the Patriots didn’t win the Super Bowl. I didn’t have a dog in the hunt, although since I live in New England, the game was on everybody’s radar screens. Maybe I should have taken them all hot-tubbing and stargazing.

So, back to astronomy blogging. I was surprised to see a story about a timeline of astronomy blogs, with this humble blog you’re reading listed among the earliest ones the author could find. That started a (predictable) discussion over at Bad Astronomy about who was really first and how you define “blog” and so forth. Frankly, I think it’s an interesting dip back in history, and a bit jarring to see how quickly things have changed in the few years since I started blogging.

Of course, my blog is relatively new, compared to my web page, which began in the early 1990s as a way for me to blow off steam writing during graduate school. It was first hosted at the University of Colorado. Then, when I graduated and got a job, bought my official domain name (http://www.thespacewriter.com) and moved it to a server at Voicenet. A couple of years, I migrated the whole thing over to Hostgator. Recently I started revamping my site design (in the background), and I’m rethinking my whole approach to talking and writing about astronomy. So, things change. Which is good, since that’s what the universe is about: change.

Speaking of changing, I’ve been working with Haystack Observatory on a vodcast series about spaceweather. The first episode went up a few weeks ago here and we posted it on Youtube as well. As it turns out, we had to update the video, so it’s been reposted on Youtube; please go over and check it out and help us build up our visitor count again! And please feel free to write to me with your comments about it, particularly if you are a teacher and use it in your classroom!