Google for Earths Celestial View

The constellations of Andromeda, Hydra and Vulpecula are now
just a mouse click away for amateur star-gazers following the launch of Google
Sky, says BBC. The tool is an add-on to Google Earth, a program that allows
users to search a 3D rendition of our planets surface. Sky will allow
astronomers a chance to glide through images of more than one million stars and
200 million galaxies.

Optional layers allow users to explore images from the Hubble
Space Telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles. "The basic idea is
to take Google Earth and turn it on its head," said Ed Parsons, Geospatial
technologist at Google.

To use the new system, users will need to have Google Earth
installed on their computer. Digital astronomers can then zoom into an area from
which they want to view the night sky. "Click a button and the world flips
round, and you see the sky from that particular location," explained
Parsons. "The view would be of the constellations that you would see
oriented in the sky on that particular day at that particular time."

Imagery for the system came from six research institutions
including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observatory in
California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Center. Much of the
imagery can be found through searching on the Internet but Google hopes the
add-on will be simpler and more fun.

Sky is not the first time that Google has ventured into space.
In March 2006, the company launched Google Mars that allows users to explore the
surface of the Red Planet.

Also, Google Sky is not the only tool that allows astronomers to
explore the night sky from their computer. Stellarium, a free open source tool
also shows the night sky in 3D and gives people a chance to access more than 210
mn stars, in addition to planets and moons. The software is the brainchild of
Fabien Chereau, a research engineer at the Paris Astronomical Observatory, and
is used at many planetariums.

Like the suite of Google applications, it allows people to
explore places of interest on Earth as well as mission sites on the moon and
Mars. Commercial alternatives such as Imaginovas Starry Night, which offer a
range of software packages aimed at beginners to "the serious
astronomer", also exist.