An award!

Literarygeek has awarded Blogstronomy an, erm, award over at her blog, No Love Sincerer... (see this post).

O.k, so it's a social meme rather than an actual award, but it's nice to know that someone enjoys what I'm doing here. I'm also proud to note that this was the only non-food themed blog on her list.

Why proud? Proud because Literarygeek's list implies that she's primarily concerned with things other than science and astronomy, and that's the kind of person that I'm trying to attract with this blog. There are plenty of blogs around that cater for people with some kind of academic base in the physical sciences, and the more specialised cases of astronomy, cosmology and related fields. What I'm trying to do is bring astronomy to a wider, perhaps more casual audience.

To do this, I need you, my currently small but nevertheless perfectly formed reader base, to take an active part in this blog:

• First and foremost, I need questions: I need to know the kind of things that the kind of people I'm trying to attract want to learn about. I'm not a casual consumer of astronomical information - around 1/3 to 1/4 of my degree was astronomy-based, and I continue to lap up whatever astronomy comes my way - so I find it difficult to know what floats the boat of less sciency people. I am regularly surprised (in a good way) by some of the questions I receive; some of the subjects that people want to know about.
• Secondly, I need readers. If I can build up my reader base two things should (hopefully) happen: 1. more questions will come in of their own accord*, and 2. I'll know I'm doing something right and will have an incentive to carry on. So please, if you enjoy reading this blog, mention it to anybody you know who might similarly get something out of it. Please don't spam anybody, but if you know anybody who occasionally wonders about space- related issues, I'd appreciate it if you pointed them in this direction.
• Next, I need feedback. If I post something that you enjoy, let me know by commenting**. If I post something that you don't understand, or disagree with, then let me know by commenting. If I post something that sparks a question in your mind, comment and let me know. In short, if you read something I have posted that evokes a feeling of any kind, comment and let me know.
• Last, but by no means least, I'm interested in hosting posts by guest bloggers: If you'd like to write a post on the theme of astronomy, cosmology, or anything space-related, I'll be happy to post it here as long as it's of half decent quality, relatively inoffensive and can in some way be seen to fit in with the focus of Blogstronomy (which is fairly broad, to be fair). Ideas for themes include: something you've studied recently (at school or university) that you found to be interesting; a list of reasons why you're interested in astronomy; some comments on why you think astronomy is relevant/ important; where you see astronomy and related fields playing their part in the future.

That's all for today, except to say that Literarygeek's award bumps my suspected regular readership up to three. If there are any more of you lurking out there, please comment and say hi. I would genuinely love to know if there are any other people there who get something out of this blog. Make yourself known, tell me what you get out of reading Blogstronomy already, and what you'd like to get out of it in the future. If you're reading this, then I'm writing for you, so tell me what you want!

One more note, then I'll go, I promise: I'll expand on Literarygeek's award meme over at my personal blog, TeaKay's Blog, a bit later (it'd be kind of off-topic to do it here).

* Not actually of their own accord, but you know what I mean...

** Commenting may seem difficult for people new to the blog-reading lark, but it really isn't as daunting as it may first feel. No, I don't allow anonymous commenting, but signing in isn't a chore. You don't even have to have an account with blogger (the site that hosts this blog): you can sign in with an existing google login, for example.