Issue 629: A Special Anniversary + Uncle Rod’s Yearly M13 + The Messier Project 8

Before we get to the subject(s) of this month’s blog, muchachos, I want to acknowledge an anniversary: This month marks twenty years—yes, twenty—of Uncle Rod’s AstroBlog. In that long-ago summer of 2006, did I have an inkling we’d still be here two decades down the line? Hell, no! I’d have laughed if somebody had suggested such an absurdity. Not that there haven’t been changes as we’ve rolled along. The ‘blog began on AOL, on their long gone “Blogspot on AOL” site. In the beginning, the posts were short, often centered on current events in amateur astronomy, and were aimed at least partially at my fellow astronomy club members here. Then, AOL began going, err, “belly” up, and I moved the AstroBlog to Google in 2006, where it has remained. That was just the beginning of the changes, however. The big one came a couple of years later in July of 2008. Without me knowing where it came from, the idea popped into my head that the AstroBlog could be more, and I wanted it to be more. Articles,…