Moondark for April: Google the Sky and Virtualize Your Observing

What did we do before Google? When you needed to check some astronomical fact or refresh your memory, you used to look in a book. Google has made finding things faster and easier at the same time rendering the information more accessible and sharable, and this trend continues. Just recently, Google launched Google Sky at sky.google.com. The look and feel will be familiar to users of Google Maps with arrows and a zoom slider located on the left. Moving around with the mouse reveals the whole sky though it is one unlike any you’ve see before, mosaicked from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other databases. Zoom into some recognizable region, or search for a favorite object. Choose one of the category thumbnails or even 17th-century constellation figures) from the bottom of the screen, whereupon pop-up balloons provide details on the featured stars and objects. You can overlay infrared and microwave imagery with adjustable transparency. Maps for the Moon and Mars are there too, as well as podcasts from Earth and Sky. The images are beautiful, but you need to be pretty familiar with the deep sky as well as comfortable star hopping by the seat of your pants. Zoomed in, it’s pretty easy to get lost. Google Sky is a fledgling application and deserves some knocks. It is not a planetarium program in the conventional sense. There are no means to set time, location or horizon features, relatively few ways to alter the sky’s appearance or control the number of stars or objects visible, nor is there realistic simulation of the twilights. You cannot call up conventional object data bases or print finder charts. Starry Night and Stellarium and a host of other programs provide those functions, and thus complement Google Sky. On the other hand, you can get under the hood of Google Sky using Google Earth. This separate downloadable, online interface for mapping has sported a sky view for some time. But get ready to roll up your sleeves here. The interface and supporting image data bases are similar, but you can upload and register astrophotos, use image measuring tools, annotate your view, add tours and timelines, and save the results as kml files. These files can be saved, posted or emailed to other star gazers. The real, "crowd-sourced" potential of Google's Sky lies in this Web 2.0 product. Google Sky has stiff competition in the cross-platform, online, all sky, pick-a-catalog arena. Sky-Map.org is at first glance similar but has much more planetarium functionality (e.g., you can easily set your location) and pop-up object information balloons. You can upload your own astrophotos as well as enjoy those others have contributed. In fact, there is a small user community and discussion forum. The Inhabited Sky at my.sky-map.org, allows you to see what others are viewing and even sync with them. Could arm-chair observers connect with wired astroimagers under clear skies with telescope control and image acquisition, already standard in planetarium programs? Now this is truly a virtual star party. And sometime this spring, Microsoft is slated to launch the WorldWide Telescope. Press releases promise that this downloadable application will out do all the rest, with an advanced user interface bringing amateurs much closer to online astronomical science. Remember how the first star programs looked on an Apple IIe or Commodore 64? Astronomical surveys have amassed terabytes of data and “cloud computing” has only recently made it wirelessly accessible to your laptop. There are many great educational possibilities here, including custom previews for outreach events, online sky tours, indoor monthly meeting constellations of the month presented concurrentlyly from a dark sky site, or even organizing annual deep-sky object marathons. Star party organizers could post an evening observing program, even for those clouded out or on the other side of the world. The Winter Star Party or Star Party Down Under would be just a click away. These three services, Google Sky, Sky-Map.org and the to-be released WorldWide Telescope are definitely worth keeping an eye on. Star gazers can anticipate that competition will turn into innovation. And you sure can’t beat the price! Moondark is written by Doug Miller, published at the Moondark web site, and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. This document was last revised on 23 March 2008. Text and images on this web page are free for non-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 3.0 License. Ask Doug about other uses.