Deciding to start a website can be a somewhat heart-wrenching experience. I knew that I wanted to start one, and that I wanted to start one based on astronomy. The problem was, by the time I got around to doing it, there were countless thousands of websites about astronomy all over the internet. Some were from places you'd expect: a variety of government facilities like NASA and NSF, university astronomy departments, amateur astronomy clubs, and individual astronomer sites.

Since the advent of blogging however, an explosion has taken place of people starting their own websites dedicated to such noble pursuits as looking up at sky, commenting on space policy, providing an online observer log, posting images taken from their telescopes, or educating visitors about astronomy.

Oh sure, many of the blogs turned into real dogs, with posts that amounted to a diary of what the blogger did that day, what he/she had for lunch, and who they hoped would go with them tomorrow. Luckily, those blogs were pretty quickly filtered out of my RSS reader and I moved on.

Other blogs/websites flourished and kept my interest. Some of the more prominent being Astronomy Picture of the Day, Tom's Astronomy Blog, and Bad Astronomy Blog just to name a few.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little late to the prom when I finally decided to do this site. My initial reaction to all of these sites was: well, since so many people are already making astronomy websites, I guess I should just forget it and go on to something else. and for a long time, that's just what I did. I pursued other interests, kept observing with my telescope, and just kept myself generally occupied.

Still, I knew I had something to contribute to the internet-o-sphere. I had gained a lifetime of experience not just studying astronomy, but making money at it by starting my own 'Mr. Wizard' business that included using my own portable planetarium. Further, I have spent years developing astronomy curriculum and have learned what it takes to really ignite a student's passion for the night sky.

Since these experiences were my own, I knew no one could duplicate them exactly, so I went ahead with this website idea. I came to believe that I could provide content no one else was duplicating.

The next question I needed to tackle was what kind of format should the site be? I really didn't feel like another astronomy "what's new" or news blog was warranted so I went with the standard website format. This relieved me immediately of the pressure to post several times a day or even several times a week. I could post whenever I wanted to.

Blogs are funny things, the quality of the blog is as individual as the person or persons writing it. One of my least favorite things about blogs is that most people seem to feel the need to post something even if they really have nothing to say. The fact that all posts are dated puts pressure on the blogger to not let too much time elapse between posts or they will lose readers.

The thing is, they lose readers anyway when they make trivial posts (unless they are exceptionally funny) that they are better off not posting at all.

Finally, I knew I wouldn't have time to post daily or even weekly. I needed to be able to post whenever the time became available.

Of course, this would mean that my information would need to be somewhat timeless. Every page you find here should be relevant in the coming months, years, even decades. I will endeavor to make sure that it is.

I sincerely hope you find this site useful and please subscribe to my feed to keep track of my updates.