Google Sky: Amateur astronomers can view the stars from their PC
August 22, 2007 By Peter
Filed under News
If you are an amateur astronomer then you are going to love Goggle’s new toy, what they are calling Google Sky. This toy, well its more than a toy in the eye’s of Google, you will get the chance to see what the night sky looks like from where you are.
What you have to do is enter your postcode, then you will get an image up of what the night sky would look like from your back garden, how cool is that you do not have to move from your PC to see the stars. The software that is used on Google Sky uses a library of images that has been taken from a range of telescopes across the world; there are also images from the NASA’s Hubble Telescope which is in Space.
You can even zoom in on the image so you can get an even closer look at the planets, stars, constellations and galaxies. Google have access to over 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies, and the great thing is users can travel millions of light-years with just the click of their mouse.
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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
Horsehead Nebula: http://www.sky-map.org/?object=Horsehead Nebula&zoom=9&img_source=IMG_all&img_borders=1
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.