Google Earth Sky

[mmcirvin]

I would be remiss not to mention what you probably already know, that Google Earth now has a Sky layer. I think I agree with the Bad Astronomer's criticisms of it as a planetarium program--it's very 1.0 (well, 0.1 beta) and still a few steps away from great. Existing free programs like Stellarium and Celestia are better for many purposes. But the idea of using a Google Earth-style approach with actual astronomical photos covering the whole sky is interesting and has potential.

It has been pointed out to me by a concerned individual that there seems to be a giant Koosh ball surrounding Polaris.

(Update: Added links to Stellarium and Celestia because I like 'em. Actually it looks like I should check out Stellarium again; they've added a huge number of features since the last time I downloaded it, including the ability to fly around the solar system and land on other planets. Celestia actually lets you fly around through interstellar space and explore known exoplanet systems, but is less convenient for getting a ground-based planetarium view that you can easily compare with your actual sky. Also, the big problem with having a fully explorable 3D universe is that we simply don't have full 3D information about a lot of objects; a simulator that limits you to our solar system can represent deep-space objects as flat images.)

Comments

[acw.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Boreal Celestial Polar Koosh. Rarely observed, that one is.

Hmmm...

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

I expected other TimC to comment on this first as they used images taken from his workplace.