The newest Google Earth beta has an incredibly cool new feature: you can zoom into the sky!

The imagery is based on SDSS and DSS surveys and Hubble photos.

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BBC: Google Earth given celestial view

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

tdvance made a vague reference to it on this thread with a bit more detail from Moonhawk.

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You need the latest version of Google Earth..

http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html

BA Blog: Google Sky

The BA seemed to find lots not to like -- or at least discovered some polishing that was needed.

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It works good, and on a computer that is pretty wimpy, too. Thanks Kullat.

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oops--I may have misread the thread I responded to then --my reference was actually to the light pollution map on Google Earth, thinking Moonhawk was writing of that.

But when I get home, I will certainly try out Google Sky.

Todd

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

ok--I installed the newest Google Earth 4.2, and found Google Sky under the View menu--it is pretty good. It is more responsive than either WikiSky or Starry Night or The Sky, though it has less detail, which might be the reason.

Reye's (or however you spell his name) constellation figures are used mostly, but there are some I don't recognize. E.g. Bootes looks sort of like Orion to me in this rendition. I guess on a future version I'd like to have the ability to use more traditional constellation lines--I never liked Reye's version of Ursa Major and a few other ones.

I used the search box to find locations and images of several objects--it is not complete--M24 was missing, and some times I had to try multiple names to find an object (didn't like "Jewel Box Cluster", but it found "Jewel Box"). Also, it couldn't find Proxima Centauri, and when I used the alternate name Alpha Centauri C, it found Alpha Centauri A/B instead. Searches for Barnard's Star, red dwarf, or even the word "red" failed. "galaxy" did come up with a list of galaxies, though.

I like its "Google Earth" style controls better than what's on most planetarium software--very fast and responsive and (for me) intuitive. I like that it shows dots and the names of more stars as you zoom in, fewer as you zoom out, just like with cities.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

According to the response on the google earth message board regarding the horizon, it seems beta testers found it confusing, so they took it out.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat..../page/0#980732

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infact google sky is a great concept, it will surely become very popular in short time.

I cant fathom how adding a horizon line would make it anything other than less confusing to view the stars with.

As it is, it shows the view of the stars straight up over your location. Other than that it is completely unintuitive. I am not sure which way is north or south.

Turning the grid on helps a lot, but its still nowhere near as clear as if there was a horizon line.

The concept of integrating it with GoogleEarth so one mearly has to pan up to the sky to see the stars up there at that moment would be an amazing feature. I truley hope it can one day be implemented.

The Google Sky has been updated with many new features such as the possibility to view parts or the whole sky in different wavelengths, current events (GRB alerts, microlensing events) etc.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman