Google Earth Gets Star-Gazing Add On

Tom F writes to mention BBC News is reporting that Google has released a new add on for Google Earth that will allow users to search a 3D rendition of over 1 million stars and 200 million galaxies called Google Sky. "Optional layers allow users to explore images from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles. [...] Users can overlay the night sky with other information such as galaxies, constellations and detailed images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Imagery for the system came from six research institutions including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observatory in California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre. "

Comments

sounds...

[cosmocain]

...a bit like this? except for open source. hu. now, what should motivate me using the google-tool?

Re:sounds...

[ajs]

Stellarium doesn't integrate with maps of the world, that's why. With Stellarium, you specify your location in Lat./Lon. or you specify the location of a known observatory. Then it will show you what the sky will look like at the specified (or current) time of day. With Google Earth, it would be easy to see where the stars are in the sky from anywhere on the planet. I think you phrased that poorly. Stellarium lets you see the sky from any point on earth, but you might find yourself using Google Maps (and/or Google Earth) to locate your point on earth. This is a fair point, but one that's moot after the first time you fire up Stellarium.

Another tool that's useful is celestia, a tool for displaying the known universe in 3D, and navigating through it. It's a nice compliment to stellarium, and I recommend both tools highly. To see what celestia is capable of, fire it up and press "d" for the demo. It's definitely one of those "oooh, ahhh" moments.

Re:sounds...

[bcrowell]

Some free-as-in-something possibilities that either run on linux or are web-based:

• YourSky - This is a very elaborate and sophisticated web-based service that makes star charts; free as in beer, but not open-source
• PlanetFinder - A java applet I wrote that concentrates on ease of use; good for figuring out what you're seeing with your naked eyes, or for planning observations, e.g., when is Mars going to rise so I can point my telescope at it?
• Stellarium - cool photorealistic planetarium (computer-generated images, as opposed to maps or photos); FOSS
• Celestia - lets you fly around the universe in 3d; FOSS
• Xephem - Sky maps. Free as in beer. Has some really nasty licensing issues. I used to use it a lot, and it worked great, but it's no longer available as a Debian package.

Note that they all do different things. They're not interchangeable.

Re:Another suggestion

[Deag]

This website is good for this. I used it for looking at the ISS and it was accurate.

Stellarium is generated.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

According to these guys, google sky is (like google earth) stitched together actual photographs.

Could be more accurate than a generated model.

Re:Another suggestion

[CraftyJack]

You're thinking of JTrack:
science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html

Re:If it's been released, where's the link

[chr.vinter]

Update or install Google Earth from http://http//earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Re:yes, but

[Opportunist]

How could he look outside, without Windows?

Check out Celestia

[voislav98]

You should check out Celestia, which runs both on Windows and Linux (and Mac I think). http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Nice thing about it is that it has a huge library of add-ons that people make from NASA images. IMHO with a little work it's far superior to commercial astronomy programs (such as Starry Night), although my Celestia folder is at about 2 GB right now.

Re:Another suggestion

[alphakappa]

There is a layer that can provide satellite orbits

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/12/in teresting_satellit.html