Hi all

In line with my annual pre-xmas tradition of reflecting on the last year, with 2010 drawing to a close, it's now time to highlight some of the more popular events, topics and statistics here on IceInSpace.

As a common trend, showcase astronomical events always bring the most visitors to IceInSpace - particularly the general public, and especially if the media grabs hold of it and reports about it on the various media outlets.

The four most popular astronomical events in 2010 were:

• Anthony Wesley (forum member "bird") discovered *another* impact strike on Jupiter
• 4 planets and crescent moon conjunction
• Total solar eclipse, 11 july 2010
• 26th june 2010 partial lunar eclipse

Some of the most popular topics and threads on the IceInSpace Forum are often the ones in General Chat where we get to know each other a bit more. There was a bit of that in 2010, but interestingly some image threads were the most popular in 2010. The most popular topics in 2010:

• Anthony's 2nd jupiter impact:
• Plane Crossing middle of moon:
• Discussion about avatar the movie
• Houghy's doghouse observatory
• sbig or qhy9
• Anthony's 'perfect seeing' jupiter image
• Interest in the ipad
• Upcoming total solar eclipse 2012

During 2010, we passed some significant milestones, including:

• We had our first major IceInSpace Community Survey
• We restructured the forum to have more focus on the beginners and a few more niche sub-forums.
• Passing 8,000 registered members
• Passing 1,000 Likes on the IceInSpace Facebook page
• Turning 6 years old in September
• Passing 60,000 threads and 600,000 posts!
• Holding our 5th IceInSpace AstroCamp (IISAC2010)

Some other interesting IceInSpace statistics for 2010 include:

• Over 1,800 new member registrations (a little less than 2009)
• Over 130,000 new posts (a little less than 2009)
• Almost 8,000,000 page views (a little more than 2009)
• Over 2,000 sets of items have been bought and sold through the IceTrade Classifieds (over 20% more than 2009! No GFC in Astronomy!?)
• Apart from the IceInSpace Forum, the most popular pages on IceInSpace were the homepage, the Projects and Articles page, the Reviews page, the Moon Phase page and the Links page
• 41% of people are browsing IceInSpace using Internet Explorer (47% last year). 2nd is Firefox with 37% (39% last year). Safari and Chrome are increasing and make up almost 18% (last year 10%), mostly thanks to the iPad and iPhone no doubt (for Safari at least).

I'm really looking forward to what 2011 will bring, for astronomy and for IceInSpace.

On behalf of IceInspace, Terry and I would like to thank everyone for being part of a fantastic year and a fantastic community. We wish everyone a safe and happy christmas and we'll be back with more in 2011!

All the best to you and your families.