News: Page 2

New IDS Park: Big Bend: February 18, 2012 - One of the darkest spots in the United States, Big Bend National Park, was designated an International Dark Sky Park by the IDA. This remove corner of Texas has very cities with the nearest metropolitan areas -- Chihuahua, in Mexico -- located 200 miles away. This, along with the efforts of local towns and the National Park Service, has led to an area where the night sky is virtually untouched fro... Read more...

The 5 Eclipses of 2012: January 29, 2012 - The year 2012 will be an exciting one in terms of eclipses for those living along the Pacific. For everyone else, it will be somewhat of a disappointment. There will be 5 eclipses predicted to occur from now until the end of the year and all will be centered on the Pacific Ocean. The first eclipse of the year will occur on May 20-21 and will be an annular solar eclipse where the Moon's diameter... Read more...

GLOBE at Night, 2012: January 28, 2012 - Every year, since 2006, the GLOBE at Night project has been busy collecting data on the quality of our night sky from around the world. As the world's population grows, so does the need for more nighttime lighting. Unfortunately, most light fixtures are poorly designed and much of that light ends up in the sky, contributing to the ever-growing problem of light pollution. GLOBE at Night attempts to... Read more...

Happy December Solstice!: December 21, 2011 - Today is the day of the December solstice, marking the beginning of winter for the northern hemisphere and summer for the southern hemisphere. The actual moment of solstice occurs at 05:30 on December 22 UT (21:30, December 21 PST). At that moment, the Earth is at the point in its orbit where the South Pole is pointed most directly at the sun as it will reach this year. This means that there will ... Read more...

Release Season, 2011: December 20, 2011 - As 2011 comes to a close, the Caglow project begins preparations for a new series of releases. This is the time of year when all subsidiary projects showcase their grand releases of the year. This year, it will be especially grand with all three projects -- Aciqra, Aloac and I -- making their first stable releases as part of the Caglow platform which will reach version 2.1. Here is the schedule... Read more...

Dec. 2011 Eclipse Summary: December 11, 2011 - As predicted, a total lunar eclipse occurred on December 10, 2011 which was visible from eastern Europe, Asia, Australia and the northwestern half of North America. Unlike the last total lunar eclipse visible from the United States (December 21, 2010), most of the country where the eclipse was favorable had excellent weather conditions with only thin cirrus clouds over the West coast allowing ... Read more...

December Lunar Eclipse: December 03, 2011 - In slightly over 1 week from now, on December 10, 2011, the moon will once again make a voyage through the shadow of the Earth (the umbra) visible from our planet as a lunar eclipse. During the 51 minutes and 8 seconds of totality, the entire disk of the moon will become a bright red as light refracted by the Earth's atmosphere reflects off the moon. This will be the last such event until 2014 and... Read more...

Historic Articles Available: August 19, 2011 - Back in January, 2010, the Caglow Central website went down because of a server failure. It stayed down for a full two months before the Caglow project switched to a more reliable hosting provider. However, due to a lack of backups, we were unable to restore any of the original site and had to start off fresh with an empty site. Since then, that site fully recovered and has grown to become bigger ... Read more...

Pluto With 4 Moons: July 21, 2011 - Just hours ago on July 20, 2011, astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope discovered yet another moon of what was once the smallest planet of the solar system. The astronomers were looking for possible rings around the dwarf planet caused by micro-meteoroid impacts just as the impact of a Mars-sized object into Earth (later forming is moon) is thought to have created. Originally, Plu... Read more...

Two Years of Caglow.com: July 12, 2011 - On July 12, 2009, the Caglow project officially launched its online presence at caglow.com. Since then, it has gone through a lot, including being completely wiped out at the end of 2009 by our old web host. Back then, Aciqra II Fairweather did not exist. Neither did the I language nor Aloac. A lot can happen in two years. For the record, the Caglow project has been around for three years, not ... Read more...

Happy IDS Week!: April 04, 2011 - This week is recognized by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and others as International Dark Sky Week. This is a week of recognition of the impacts of light pollution and is a chance for us to reduce our contributions to wasteful lighting. Meanwhile the whole of April is designated as Global Astronomy Month. Events will be held worldwide including the GLOBE at Night campaign to map ... Read more...

Supersized Full Moon: March 18, 2011 - On March 20, 2011 at 08:11 (UT), the moon will be full. Less than an hour later, at 09:10 (UT), the moon will reach perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit to the Earth. The closeness of the two events makes this next full moon the biggest since 1993, or 18 years. There are many rumors floating the around the internet that this will cause geologic turmoil on Earth. Those claims are n... Read more...

Class X2 Solar Flare: February 16, 2011 - Early on February 15 at 01:56 (UT), active region 1158 exploded with an X2.2 flare. A class X flare is the strongest category of solar flares and has the potential to cause bright auroras to appear towards the magnetic poles. The last class X solar flare occurred during the previous solar cycle in 2006. While this strong flare, it is not strong enough to cause substantial damage. That would req... Read more...

New M6.6 Solar Flare: February 14, 2011 - After a period of decline at the end of 2010, solar activity is on the rise again. At approximately 17:38 UT on February 13, 2011, a class M6.6 flare occurred on the sun from large sunspot 1158: http://www.webcitation.org/5wTNL0pAN (below of center in image) This is the largest Earth-directed flare of Solar Cycle 24 which officially began at the end of 2008. As this flare is Earth directed, a C... Read more...

Dark Skies of Europe: February 07, 2011 - Light pollution is a growing problem as the world's population booms. Most of this is from poorly directed light fixtures causing light to be lost to the sky, money to be wasted, sleep patterns to be disrupted, nocturnal animal behaviors to change and threatens the existence of the dark sky. The International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) was formed to combat this problem. Since 1988, it has been ... Read more...