Issue 632: A Key to Worlds Beyond

Yes, I intended to continue the Messier Project this month…but… Hurricane Isaias came through and I wound up not being able to get into the backyard until my prime targets for the month, the crowd of globulars in Ophiuchus, were in the trees… Talk about synchronicity, muchachos. Last month in the AstroBlog article about my new (ahem) Tasco, I mentioned A Key to Worlds Beyond, the little book/booklet Tasco once included with their telescopes. A copy had come with the 11TE reflector I bought in 1976, and I’d liked it—a lot. Unfortunately, fifty years and many moves later my copy of “Key” had disappeared. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it. Then, a week or so after Issue 631 (“The Good Tasco Redux”) went live, I was looking for something or other in the mover’s boxes we brought from the old Chaos Manor South and had “temporarily” stored on shelves in the carport. I opened one, looked in, and what should I see? Amazingly, almost unbelievably, A Key to Worlds Beyond! It was…