Happy Birthday to us! 7 years of IceInSpace! Tell us your favourite moments..

[h0ughy (David)]

for me this site has been good and bad and ugly and beautiful and sad, and joyous, poignant, factual , nerdy, obsessive, second home, life changing, very very very bad with the for sales, a great place to meet and catch up.

I have meet a few people over the years, and i must say they all have been influential with my future. Some good friends to boot

for me there is nothing that has surpassed this momentous theorem

[danielsun]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

for me this site has been good and bad and ugly and beautiful and sad, and joyous, poignant, factual , nerdy, obsessive, second home, life changing, very very very bad with the for sales, a great place to meet and catch up.

I have meet a few people over the years, and i must say they all have been influential with my future. Some good friends to boot

for me there is nothing that has surpassed this momentous theorem

That was Gold!! Absolutely laughed my head off!!
Yeah, Ken has done a few rippers like that!

I also remember a thread about a BMX that was on sale on Ebay and the blurb was an absolute classic with one bit saying something like that he done a skid that long that it almost got a chick pregnant.

[Octane (Humayun)]

That thread is comedy goldmine, indeed. I loved it the first time I saw it, and, you just brought back a bunch of memories, haha.

H

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

That wasn't really me
It was my Averted vision member.

Yeah, I'm much like Houghy.
For me, this place has been up and down, good and bad, boring and exciting, but most of all always adventurous

Waaayyyy back in the early days much to the annoyance of Mike and the Mods I was constantly having posts and even whole threads deleted - Regularly!

At one stage I disagreed with a deletion, so I deleted about 500 posts and about 20 threads of my own!!!

That's why you can't delete threads you started nowdays. My fault

At another time I almost had IIS sued by Sky and Space magazine
and gave poor AS&T a hard time! I spoofed their magazine covers regularly

But apart from the hell I raised, I have also met some of the nicest people I know, in person and in here.
I have received some of the best help I could have wished for, and I hope I contributed to newbies in a positive way.

It's been an interesting ride, that's for sure

Here's a sample of some of mine that didn't breach copyright:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/a...achmentid=7700
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/a...chmentid=31361
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/a...achmentid=1144

To new members, stick around and enjoy the ride

[erick (Eric)]

Yes, the day of the Bird Strike was an exciting time!

From an observational astronomy perspective there have many highlights - after that initial exhilaration of observing brand new objects in the sky, eg. Omega Centauri for the first time, through binoculars - most of mine revolve around equipment - so discovering SDM Telescopes through this site was great. First they seemed so unattainable, and now.....I got one!

[FJA (Faith)]

Originally Posted by PCH

Lol - faith, here's a little (and I mean little!) joke for you. The setup being that there used to be a girl on one of those quiz shows (Brucie - nice to see yer, to see yer - nice) over there many years ago called Isla St Claire.

So (this is the joke, so get ready to laugh!), guy comes on the radio (think it was DAve Lee Travis - remember him?) and says, ... "If Isla St Claire was to marry Barry White, then divorce him and marry Brian Ferry. Would she be an Isla White Ferry?"

Well, I told you it was just a little joke. But a bit funny I thought

Not bad.

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Originally Posted by atalas

Seven years already! no wonder I feel old....favorite moments...huddled around a new group of friends at the first IIS star party early hours of the morning,freezing! hehe

Hi Louie and everyone else,

My two best memories of IIS involve two of the IIS astro camps.

The first one (2006?) was excellent because we actually got to meet a lot of the people we had only met online before. All of the original Central Coast contingent had met before and it was great to see them all turn up at Lostock. Mike, Rod Berry, Louie, Rocket Boy, Gary, Andrew Murrell, Ed Rocca, George Livanos, Mark Suchting and possibly one or two others.

The highlight of the first IISAC for me had to be without question Mike Bogan (Sausageman). He arrived early afternoon on the Friday having driven down from Queensland and proceeded to consume copious quantities of VB stubbies. As it was in January and not dark until after 9pm Mike was absolutely legless by the time it got dark. He fell asleep and did not do any observing whatsoever that I can recall on the first night, notwithstanding the skies were superb. Mike woke up on Saturday morning and proceeded to make a whole batch of homemade sausages for lunch for everyone. He bought everything with him to make them, including the pork, the mincer, the meal, all the spices and the skins. They were pretty tasty too I might add. I thought, "well Mike is as bright as a button this morning and at least he can do some observing tonight." How wrong I was. Mike started on the VB stubbies early afternoon and proceeded to do a total re run of Friday. By 9pm Mike was absolutely legless again and fast asleep in bed. Mike surfaced early Sunday morning, packed the van up and drove back to QLD without looking through an eyepiece to my knowledge. The observing conditions that first IISAC were excellent with very transparent skies and some excellent seeing in the early AM on both days.

The other highlight for me was Comet McNaught in 2007. Possibly the single most stunning thing I have seen in 40 years of looking. Andrew Murrell, Lachlan McDonald, Gary Kopff, Tony Buckley, myself and a couple of others stayed up on Mount Dissappointment to observe the comet and take some pictures under full darkness. By the time it had gotten fully dark probably 95% of the people who originally trekked up there to observe it, had already gone back to the IISAC campsite and in fact missed the Comet at its best.

The other highlight for me is seeing so many people who have now been able to get into astronomy, through this website and because decent equipment is now a lot more affordable than it was 20 years or more ago.

I hope to see many of you at IISAC 2011. I plan to be there on the Friday and Saturday nights. Gary, Andrew and myself will be running sky tours as we have in past years.

The dissappointment of IIS for me was missing IISAC 2010 because of work commitments and the fact I had just moved to Kiama and started a new job only a month beforehand.

Cheers,
John B

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks to everyone for your great responses, I really enjoyed reading those.

The article with my favourites (it was very hard to narrow down) is now on the homepage:

IceInSpace Homepage

Thanks!

[Jen]

Congrats IIS cheers to plenty more years to come


I have some amazing friends from this forum that i will now treasure for ever and hoping to meet many more of you in the future







It is so great to talk to people about astronomy and not get the rolled eyes look of oh no here she goes with her astro talk AGAIN
All my non-astro friends think im weird but i feel normal on here hahahahha

[g__day (Matthew)]

Happy 7th Birthday IceInSpace,

I've been here for a few years now and enjoyed every moment of it. The community is great - to tap into know how, to see images of astrophotography done right, to understand the pros and cons of gear and there limits and for me to buy and sell used gear (two OTAs, two cameras, software, eyepieces and a mount so far).

Thanks to all for making it such a great place!

Matthew

[steve000 (Steve)]

WOO happy bday. clear days ahead for brissy