While most people are celebrating new year, I get to celebrate another milestone- the second birthday of Never Trust An Atom! And what a two years it’s been- I love this community of science and astronomy enthusiasts, I’ve gotten to interview (or just chat with in a comments section) so many awesome people 🤩. Here’s to 2021!
The pandemic may have brought a lot of stress and anxiety, but it also brought me time. Time to work on my science communication project, time to look at the stars and learn to use a telescope, time to learn more about the things that interest me, not just what I have to learn for school!
This year has been huge for my blog too…
- I hit 500 followers on Instagram and held my first giveaway to celebrate. We’ve now reached over 600, and I couldn’t be happier with how this community has grown!
- I put a face to the name, and started showing up on Instagram stories more.
- I started my youtube channel!
- I had fun using instagram reels
- I had nearly 2000 visitors from over 70 different countries, and over 3000 views- nearly triple of 2019’s data!
- I won two writing competitions
- I wrote 30 blog posts, bringing my total to nearly 60!
My favourite posts to write were:
- All of my posts about stargazing/my journey into amateur astronomy. I’ve been borrowing a fantastic telescope from school since the start of the first lockdown, and I’ve loved looking at the planets! I got loads of astronomy books for christmas, so hopefully I’ll be able to spot some more things in the new year- I’m also looking to get a telescope of my own!
- Aliens on Venus? This was a really exciting discovery, and I followed it from the first press conference, spent hours trying to decipher the paper, learnt some year 13 biology and then was able to write a post that I was really proud of! Unfortunately the data has since been called into question and a reanalysis of the data showed the signal wasn’t as strong as they had thought, but it was still a fun post to write!
- The Structure of the Solar System: one of the online courses I took was about the moons or our solar system, another on atmospheric chemistry, and another on the structure of the earth, so this post is really me applying all the knowledge I learnt from them, and translating it into fun infographics I spent aaaages on in Canva!
Your favourite posts from this year by views were:
- Nasa’s Next Adventures: the decade ahead
- Spectacular Scientists: Dr Merritt Moore
- Evolution of the Spacesuit
Its also been quite a good year personally!
- Although I didn’t physically sit my exams, I came out with grades I was really happy with!
- I started my A Level courses
- I climbed my first 7a
- I relearnt to do a standing tuck back, and the splits
- I spent time learning languages and taking part in online courses
- I went on loads of bike rides and hikes and played tennis badly!
What will 2021 bring for Never Trust An Atom?
- Hopefully I will be able to continue my blog and youtube channel alongside my schoolwork. It’s proven tough as unfortunately schoolwork has to come first, but I’ve just about managed!
- I should be doing some work experience, so look out for recaps of them!
- I’m also taking the astronomy gcse
- In terms of blog posts
- A tour of the most awesome exoplanets
- The UK space industry
- The decade in space
- What is the smallest thing in the universe?
- And in terms of youtube- i’ll be continuing my ‘all you need to know about space’ series, looking at some of the biggest equations in space, starting with Kepler’s Laws and the Drake Equation!
It may have been a very different year to many, and hopefully 2021 will let us all have more adventures post-covid, but it hasn’t been all bad! Thank you all for being here, I appreciate it!
Never Trust An Atom 