Astronomy and Space is my blog where I share a personal record of my adventures in exploring and developing my interest in the universe
History
Astronomy and Space also has, in my opinion, a rich and interesting history that goes way beyond that simple statement above.
I started this blog in December 2006. At the time, I had an interest in space, and recently started playing around with Blogger. I decided to start a blog about astronomy, in which I would share interesting new things, and quickly gave it the name Astronomy and Space. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I would write about on my blog then, so I came up with a broad subtitle that included everything I could possibly write: “News, Updates, and Information about Astronomy and Space.”
At first, my posts were extremely short. I covered news events and some interesting items I found online (like Stardust@Home). Gradually over time, my posts started getting longer and more detailed. The actual work of writing a post seemed more laborious and more enriching. I would spend (and still do spend) at least an hour or two researching and writing every post. At the end, I would stop writing when I felt I had sufficiently explored a topic.
In the summer of 2010, I reflected back at the reasons why I write on this blog. I was interested in what had kept me going at a fairly regular pace for almost four years. I decided that the process of writing posts had evolved to become somewhat of a self-satisfying and selfish task. I was not writing simply to share with others the things that I was discovering. I was also working fulfill my own informational needs. There was a continual yearning inside me to learn anything and everything I could about the universe beyond our planet. And understanding specific topics in order to write a post became a way to satisfy that yearning. Writing about my own personal explorations, I have found, also lets me better file what I learn into my memory. Now, subconsciously, I have been using writing posts as an excuse to deeply understand a new discovery or an interesting phenomenon. Interestingly, this helps both me and the reader!
In the summer of 2011, I migrated the blog over to Tumblr. I felt Tumblr fit much better with how I wanted to write and maintain a blog. It was a tough decision, but ultimately the right one. I really appreciate that I am still nimble enough to make a dramatic and tough change like this. My old blog on Blogger is still available for archival purposes.
In making the migration, I heavily modified an existing theme to create a unique theme to complement the content of the blog. The focus has been on readability, while also creating a unique image.
Logo and Subtitle
I developed a subtitle and logo for the blog after its creation. They are both referencing the “Pale Blue Dot” name Carl Sagan gave to the Earth in a picture (of the same name) taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. I wrote a post about it, and Sagan’s reflections about the pictures are very moving and inspiring.
