Sky makes Google Earth a virtual telescope
by Chris Duckett in After Hours on August 22, 2007, 10:54 AM PST
Google Earth will, from tonight, allow users to view the sky as seen from ground level, thanks to a new feature called Sky.
in brief Google Earth will, from tonight, allow users to view the sky as seen from ground level, thanks to a new feature called Sky.
Sky will allow the navigation of 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies from within the Google Earth application.
The Sky interface and navigation will be similar to the standard Google Earth view and include dragging, zooming, search, My Places and layers.
Sky will show constellations, Hubble Space Telescope imagery, moon phases, planets and galaxies.
"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope" said Lior Ron, product manager at Google.
The imagery used in Sky was stitched together from numerous third parties, one of which was the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Coonabarabran.
To see Sky, users will need to download the latest version of Google Earth.
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