News: Page 5

Licensing Change: March 08, 2010 - The Caglow project has now officially switched over to the new, Aciqra License 10.3 which is a revised version of the original AL 9.11. It includes the additional requirement that anything which makes use of the covered work is to be, itself, covered under the license. This additional condition goes beyond the GPL in protecting the freedom of users. The new license is here: http://www.caglow.co... Read more...

Solar Activity Up: March 02, 2010 - The month of February, 2010 has become the first month since January of 2007 for the sun to have had sunspots every single day. This is a tremendous rise in solar activity since the nearly spotless month of August, 2009 when only 1 day out of 31 did the sun show off its display. The sunspot count is actually still slightly below the predicted amount but is quickly catching up. This could mean t... Read more...

Welcome Back: March 01, 2010 - Caglow Central is finally back in service after nearly two months out of service from a server failure. To have been down for so long is truly unfortunate. Yet, it happens and we can do nothing about it until it comes back up. So now, we ARE back up. At this point, you're probably wondering what we plan on doing. This article is obviously written to answer that question. First off, all data ... Read more...

Holiday Season Meteors: December 13, 2009 - Snow blowing around, bone-chilling temperatures intensified by the powerful gusts. Winter has arrived for us in the north and that signifies the beginning of a series of meteor showers to come. The first of these displays is what may be this year's grandest, the Geminids. This shower was first observed only a little over a century ago and has since intensified into a reliable display of over 12... Read more...

Leonids on the Way: November 15, 2009 - The Leonids are coming! These November meteors were the first mankind recognized upon its debut in 1833 with an estimated ZHR of over 200,000 (which is over 50 meteors a second). Major storms occur every 33 years or so when the associated comet Temple-Tuttle passes by the Earth. This last happened in 1998 though peaking at "only" 3000 meteors per hour. Although the count has dwindled recently a... Read more...

Orionids Meteor Shower: October 24, 2009 - 2009 is turning out to be a great year for the Orionids. The Orionids are created by a stream of debris left by Halley's Comet. Normally, this shower is overlooked due to its low peak at just 15 meteors per hour. So far, it's already over a ZHR of 40. The reason for this wide stream which normally takes Earth 1 day to pass through is believed to be due to a trail laid down by the comet around 1... Read more...

T5P (Autumn, 2009): September 26, 2009 - The following is textual information to be used to identify the 5 brightest planets in the sky in addition to bright comets which may be passing by. Data in this report has been gathered from Aciqra: http://aciqra.caglow.com For more precise calculations, please use Aciqra. Highlights -Mars gets steadily bigger and brighter -Saturn returns to visibility with knife-thin rings in the morning ... Read more...

Magic of the Heavens: September 02, 2009 - For the first time in many years, Jupiter, along with Saturn, will make their neighborhood disappear. How, you ask? They each have their own special way of tricks. Jupiter Many people know Jupiter. It's the sixth planet from the sun and the largest and most massive. Nearly everyone who's owned and used a telescope has seen it...it and its 4 moons. Take a look tonight though, and you'd be in fo... Read more...

Active Region 1025: September 01, 2009 - It's official: the proto-sunspot which appeared on the disk earlier today has been named Active Region 1025 (AR1025). And so ends the near-record-breaking streak of the lack of sunspots. Not that the spot is something to be excited about. More likely than not, it will end up being more or less like the spot which ended that last streak in September of 2008 which was AR1001. It lasted for a day ... Read more...

Spotless Streak Continues: August 27, 2009 - When was the last time you remember seeing a sunspot on the surface of the sun? How long has it been? According to the SOHO images, it's been 48 days. The last sunspot seen before this streak was part of Active Region (AR) 1024. It produced the strongest solar flares of 2 years before it rotated out of view on July 11. The coming of AR1024 led many to believe that solar minimum was finally comi... Read more...

Caglow Web 1.3 Update: August 24, 2009 - Caglow became 2 years old last week. That may be a bit remarkable; even to some of the site's older members. For a birthday present, we have updated the site to Caglow Web (Systems) 1.3. In addition to that, we have switched webhosts which support some of the new features. It's a long list and it's best that we begin now. First off, and most noticeable, is the new theme. The header image has be... Read more...

Caglow's 2nd Birthday: August 18, 2009 - Yes, it has been 2 years. Time passes quickly indeed. At the time, we were a little-known local group (no pun intended) of people interested in the workings of caves. That subject isn't one which really took off. It turned into plain discussion shortly after thus leading us to abandon caves. For those interested, we were thinking of starting a site like SummitPost (link at the end) which we grew o... Read more...

Crystal Ball says...Leonids?: August 15, 2009 - Hopefully, everyone reading this had the chance to enjoy the 160 meteors per hour zenith rate of the Perseids that was recorded. The double peak meant that the entire world had a chance at a maximum with the western hemisphere taking in the first (a trail of debris from the 1600's) in addition to the standard peak. With that over with, it's time to look forward towards the Leonids. The Leonids ... Read more...

Saturn, the Magician: August 11, 2009 - It's that time of the decade, the time our sixth planet makes its brilliant rings go poof! Actually, it won't do so again until 2024. So what exactly happens? Like every other object in the solar system, Saturn is tilted, by about 26 degrees, from its orbital plane. This makes it so, as it moves through its orbit, we, on Earth, get different aspects to how it appears. When wide open, they can a... Read more...

Watching for Perseids: August 08, 2009 - When some person think Perseids, they think of raining meteors. And for good reason too. In 1972, that was reportly exactly what happened. It's unlikely that this will be matched in 2009. Nonetheless, expectations are good with the Zenith Hourly Rate expected to peak at 200, or a little more than 3 meteors per minute, twice the usual ZHR of 100. The peak of the shower is predicted to be at 1-2A... Read more...