Snip from New York Times article by Miguel Helft:
Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to view the skies as seen from Earth. Like Google Earth, Sky will let users fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.“You will be able to browse into the sky like never before,” said Carol Christian, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute, a nonprofit academic consortium that supports the Hubble Space Telescope.
While other programs allow users to explore the skies, they typically combine a mix of representations of stars and galaxies that are overlaid with photographs, Ms. Christian said. “These are really the images of the sky. Everything is real.”
Link to article, and you can get Sky by downloading the latest edition of Google Earth: Link.
Microsoft has been developing a similar service, called World Wide Telescope. The former project lead: Jim Gray, a longtime Microsoft researcher who vanished this year during a San Francisco Bay Area sailing trip.
Reader comment: vik says,
There has been an open-source application ‘Celestia‘
that has been providing the same
concept (virtual fly-through of space, in real or unreal time) for
some time now.
The King of Jingaling says,
Also, for background astronomers is the excellent Stellarium. Both this and Celestia are excellent freeware windows on the universe.
raphael says,
Google has a nice thing going with Google Earth, but I think from a purely aesthetic point of view, NASA did it better. World Wind is just prettier. And with regard to the stars thing, about a year earlier. Oh, and it does Mars, Jupiter and Venus, which is freakin’ great!
natalie says,
On the subject of Google’s Sky thing, I was reminded about this excellent flash planetarium from Paul Neave: Link.
Paul J. Camp says:
Ok, it isn’t photo realistic, but if what you want to do is find things in the sky, from anywhere on Earth, at any time, in any year, you can hardly do better than the freeware Cartes du Ciel. I use it in my astronomy classes. It can also control telescopes, if you’re so inclined. While you’re there you can pick up the freeware Virtual Moon Atlas.