Google Sky a replacement for Starry Night?
Google have apparently launched Google Sky, I saw it on BBC Breakfast this morning when they spoke to Sir Patrick Moore about it.
The funny thing is I did not know the name of the product this morning so I searched in Google for many possible names including Google Galaxy, Google Solar System and others. But it’s actually called Google Sky. The problem is now I still can’t find the URL for it, is it released yet?
I also understand it is a plug-in/add-on for Google Earth and that the images are taken from Hubble.
Imagery for the system also came from six research institutions including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observatory in California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre.
I can’t wait to give it a go and see if I need to stop using Starry Night. Somehow I don’t think it will replace Starry Night Pro. Especially after I looked at Google Mars and Google Moon which in my opinion were not that great.
The good thing about this launch is that it also allowed me to find other programs such as Stellarium, which is a free open source tool that gives people a chance to access more than 210 million stars, in addition to planets and moons.
I now need to download Stellarium and try it out, as the screenshots look very good.
Download the newest 4.2 version of Google Earth (new since a few hours ago) and after install+launch, click on the new icon in the toolbar…
Thanks Michael, I’ll give this a go later on tonight.
I am a director of SKY-MAP.ORG. Go to http://www.sky-map.org and you will see that what Google has just announced already exists in web-based version for about a year. We have SDSS, IRAS, and H-Alpha surveys integrated in our system and we have 100s of millions of objects mapped. Only for HDF we have > 10.000 galaxies mapped. We also have articles related to hundreds of thousands of objects and many features that Google doesn’t have. We would be happy to find a way to cooperate with Google.
Here are some links:
Hubble Ultra Deep Field: http://www.sky-map.org/?img_source=IMG_all&zoom=13&object=udf
M45, The Pleiades: http://www.sky-map.org/?img_source=IMG_all&zoom=7&ra=3.772&de=23.948&img_borders=1
Thanks,
K. Lysenko,
SKY-MAP.ORG,
kostya@sky-map.info,
416-8369785.