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GOOGLE Earth is heading off-planet. Users of the popular Google Earth imagery and mapping tools are now able to search the stars through a new service called Sky.
Using Sky, Google Earth users will be able to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. The service uses the same kind of easy-to-use drop down menus as Google Earth.
Sky combines images from a variety of academic and government sources, including the Hubble telescope, as well as the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
High resolution imagery and informative overlays create a unique playground for visualising and learning about space.
To access Sky, users need only click "Switch to Sky" from the "view" drop-down menu in Google Earth, or click the Sky button on the Google Earth toolbar.
The interface and navigation are similar to that of standard Google Earth steering, including dragging, zooming, search, ‘My Places,’ and layer selection.
The southern sky data came from 894 photographic plates taken by the Anglo-Australian Observatory’s 1.2-m UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in northern New South Wales.
“The Schmidt Telescope collects as much information from the sky as a conventional telescope that is much larger, because it can see a bigger piece of sky in a single glance,” says the AAO’s Professor Fred Watson.
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