Google Earth

Google Earth to launch new service for stargazers

August 22, 2007
Google Earth to launch new service for stargazers Read the original story

 Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

Google, which created Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut's view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space.

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team.

"Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."

Like Google Earth, Sky will enable users to float and zoom in on over 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. Users will view the sky as seen from earth.

It has created different layers which will show the life of a star, constellations, high-resolution images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope and a users guide to galaxies. Its like going to a Planetarium, only on your computer!!!

A backyard astronomy layer lets users click through stars, galaxies and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes.

The imagery was stitched together from numerous third parties including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The imagery will be updated over time.

"We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing and tell their own stories," said Google Product Manager Lior Ron in a statement.

"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."

Google Earth launched in June 2005 to combine its search service with satellite imagery, maps and 3D building to display geographical information of the world. The search engine says over 250 million people have downloaded it.

The Sky service will be available on all Google Earth domains, in 13 languages from later on Wednesday. Users will need to download the newest version of Google Earth which can be found at www.earth.google.com

Google Earth

www.earth.google.com

Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

* Fly to your house. Just type in an address, press Search, and you’ll zoom right in.
* Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
* Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings, or look up to explore the sky
* Save and share your searches and favorites.

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

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

Earth. I've booted up my computer and loaded Google Sky and ready to trek across the galaxy.

Today Google released a beta version of Google Earth that includes a Google Sky feature that allows you to get up-close and personal with over 100 million galaxies and 200 million stars.

As Google did with Google Earth, Google Sky is made up of stitched photographs of the heavens pieced together to make a one giant navigate-able database of the universe.

To get started you have to download the most recent version of Google Earth software. Once you've done that launch the application and go to the View drop down menu and select the "Switch to Sky" item. Now you're ready to blast off.

Instead of navigating a sphere from the top down, you are the center of the universe and navigating a spherical universe from the position of the earth. In this sense you can't navigate freely in space - like a spaceship might. Instead it more closely resembles a planetarium on your PC that allows you to zoom in and out from inside an inverted sphere. Its like going to a Planetarium, only on your computer!!!

You start out seeing the constellations Pegasus, Libra, Virgo, and much more. From here you can zoom in to see points of interest the same way you do in Google Earth.

If you see something of interest simply click on it and Google Sky offers pop-up information and photographs on everything from black holes, galaxies, planets, and stars. Pop-up content comes from third parties. For example pictures featured in Hubble Showcases come directly from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Other high-resolution imagery comes from the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, and others.

If you know where you're going Google Sky search allows you to type in galactic destinations like the Ursa Major, Sagittarius, or the black hole NGC 5128. Otherwise you can wander aimlessly - it's quite fun.

However, to really get the most out of Google Sky you will want to use the Google Sky Layers feature. These layers are content that has been created for Google Sky.

Google Sky Layers such as Backyard Astronomy feature some of the most interesting, well-known objects that you can observe with the naked eye, a pair of binoculars, or a modest telescope. Other layers include The Planets, The Moon, and Constellations. By activating these layers all you have to do is click on an heavenly body of interest and you'll receive background information on the object.

Missing, or perhaps a feature I can't find, is a feature that allows me to punch in the date, time, and my position on Earth that would allow me to see what the night sky would look like from my back yard.

Google Sky is off to a good start. My fingers are crossed Google and third parties will add more content to Google Sky. For example, currently now all you can do is view a picture of the red planet. Google Sky has now whet my appetite for further exploring the Martian landscape via the help of Google Sky. It would be great if Google could integrate content from of NASA’s Mars Polar Lander. Google launched the highly anticipated full version of Google Earth, the search engine's stand-alone global map utility on June 28th. The application [~10Mb] is available to download from http://earth.google.com.

This geographic search tool combines local search with satellite images and maps from around the globe.

Google Earth is a standalone application that's essentially an enhanced and upgraded version of its Keyhole 3D satellite imagery product. As Google has done with several of its past acquisitions, the company has also made the application free to all users, dropping its annual subscription fee for the basic version. Google Earth Plus with additional features will cost $20 per year.

The program lets you do smooth sailing flybys of the entire Earth. You can easily fly to any spot on the globe, by entering any associated data, like street addresses, place names or lat/long coordinates. There are overlays that put additional information on the map, like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, any number of interesting stuff.

Currently, the application has detailed imagery for the U.S., Canada and the U.K. and 38 major cities in other countries, as well as medium to high resolution terrain imagery for the entire world.

You can do Local searches in the program, with icons on the map and a display on the side showing your results. You can leave notes, called "placemarks" all over the map, so you can remember where all sorts of places are. Searches and placemarks can be saved as bookmarks in "My Places". Everything can be output in an XML format called KML, that will allow the vast popularity of Google Maps to continue in Earth. You can also email a JPEG of the map, or send a KMZ file if you know the recipient has Earth installed.

Google Earth Plus gives higher resolution images, GPS support, and more sophisticated annotation (like drawing on the map).

Google Earth is a broadband, 3D application that not all computers can run.

* Apple Macintosh computers are not supported at this time (but they are working on it).
* Windows-based desktop PCs older than 4 years old may not be able to run it.
* Windows-based notebook PCs older than 2 years old may not be able to run it.

Google Earth has launched a new feature called Sky, a “virtual telescope” that the company hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

The upgraded version of the free software weaves together sky surveys conducted by the Palomar Observatory and the Anglo-Australian Observatory, along with images from the Hubble Space Telescope, to produce a zoomable view of the cosmos — in parallel to the zoomable satellite views of Earth offered by previous versions.

In effect, users can now zoom in on Earth's surface to the street level, or turn around and look skyward, zooming in on more than 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies.
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“Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available,” Carol Christian of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, a co-leader of the institute’s Sky team. “Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone’s home computer.”

The software features different layers that show the life of a star, the layout of the constellations, high-resolution Hubble images and a user’s guide to galaxies. A backyard astronomy layer lets users click through stars, galaxies and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes.

“And you don't have to know anything about astronomy to use the program,” Christian said in the institute's announcement about Sky.

Such planetarium programs have been available for years as standalone software, and there are also free Web-based planetariums such as WikiSky. But Google said incorporating the planetarium-style features into its Google Earth software could substantially expand interest in virtual as well as real-life stargazing.

Google Earth launched in June 2005, combining satellite imagery, maps and 3-D capabilities to display geographical information. The search-engine company says more 250 million people have downloaded the software since then.

Sky was incorporated into the latest version of Google Earth and made available for download Wednesday.

“We’re excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they’re seeing and tell their own stories,” Google product manager Lior Ron in a statement. “By working with some of the industry’s leading experts, we’ve been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope.”
The imagery was stitched together from numerous sources, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Digital Sky Survey Consortium and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Center as well as the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Space Telescope Science Institute. The imagery will be updated over time, Google said.

Google Sky blends the imagery from multiple sources seamlessly, said Andrew Connolly, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington who participates in Google’s visiting faculty program.

“What’s unique about this is you have all of the imaging data over the whole of the sky actually streaming. So I can look at something that covers most of the sky, say our Milky Way galaxy, and I can zoom right into a tiny galaxy that’s in the formation cycle A FUNCTION in Google Earth now lets you see the night sky in all its glory.

It's very hard to see the stars in many places on earth these days because the darn light we're generating drowns out anything but the brightest objects.

Unless you have one of those fancy telescopes that cuts through the so-called light pollution.

The tool lets you switch between earth and sky, and watch the colure in all its glory With Sky, users can now float through the skies via Google Earth. This easy-to-use tool enables all Earth users to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. High resolution imagery and informative overlays create a unique playground for visualizing 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.

As part of the new feature, Google is introducing seven informative layers that illustrate various celestial bodies and events:

Constellations -- From Cassiopeia to Andromeda, the Constellations layer connects the points of constellations through space, labeling each with its given name. Users can learn about the stars that make up their favorite constellations.

Backyard Astronomy -- The Backyard Astronomy layer lets users click through a variety of placemarks and information on stars, galaxies, and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes. This layer is useful for the amateur astronomer who may benefit from a comprehensive, organized way to reference fragments of the night sky.

Hubble Space Telescope Imagery -- The HST layer provides users with over 120 high-resolution images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA/ESA's renowned orbiting telescope.

Moon -- The Moon layer displays animations of two months of both lunar positions and moon phases.

Planets -- The Planets layer illustrates the seven official planets and their positions in the sky two months into the future.

Users Guide to Galaxies -- The Users Guide to Galaxies layer enables users to go on virtual tours through different types of galaxies, from Ursa Minor Dwarf to the Milky Way.

Life of a Star -- The Life of a Star layer takes the user on a tour through the different stages of a star's life cycle.

Sky was created by Google's Pittsburgh engineering team by stitching together imagery from numerous scientific third parties including the Space Telescope Science Institute  the Sloan Digital Sky Survey  the Digital Sky Survey Consortium  CalTech's Palomar Observatory, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre  and the Anglo-Australian Observatory . The initiative was born out of the University of Washington's participation in the Google Visiting Faculty Program, which makes it possible for leading academic researchers to visit Google for 6-12 month periods.

"We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing above and tell their own stories," said Lior Ron, Google Product Manager. "By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."

"Sky is a very cool new feature for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky and wanted to know more," said Sally Ride, former astronaut and CEO of Sally Ride Science. "I think this is a great tool for satisfying that curiosity."

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available. Anyone interested in exploring the wonders of our universe can quickly see where the stunning objects photographed by Hubble actually dwell in the heavens. Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer," said Dr. Carol Christian of STScI, who co-led the organization's Sky team with Dr. Alberto Conti.

The announcement follows last month's inclusion of the NASA layer group in Google Earth, showcasing NASA's Earth exploration. The group has three main components, including Astronaut Photography of Earth, Satellite Imagery, and Earth City Lights. Astronaut Photography of Earth showcases photographs of the Earth as seen from space from the early 1960s on, while Satellite Imagery highlights Earth images taken by NASA satellites over the years and Earth City Lights traces well-lit cities across the globe. Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut's view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space.

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team.

"Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer." It has created different layers which will show the life of a star, constellations, high-resolution images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope and a users guide to galaxies.

A backyard astronomy layer lets users click through stars, galaxies and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes.

The imagery was stitched together from numerous third parties including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The imagery will be updated over time.

"We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing and tell their own stories," said Google Product Manager Lior Ron in a statement.

"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."

Google Earth launched in June 2005 to combine its search service with satellite imagery, maps and 3D building to display geographical information of the world. The search engine says over 250 million people have downloaded it.

The Sky service will be available on all Google Earth domains, in 13 languages from later on Wednesday.

I love Science my Kids love Science, and we are all Space Buff’s. While we are Space Buff’s I usually use resources on the net that break the science down into terms that we can comprehend.

Today Google knocked one out of the ball park with Sky in Google Earth. I’ll be honest folks this is pretty darn amazing and teachers worldwide will be able to start using this immediately.

Or you can go outside and look up.