The AstroStat Slog » Google Sky

Google Sky

vlk — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:32:59 +0000

For people in the Boston area, a cornucopia of talks on Google Sky in the near future.

Hunting for Needles in Massive Astronomical Data Streams
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 4pm
Room 330, 60 Oxford St.
Ryan Scranton, Google Sky Team
Inside Google Sky
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 8pm
Room 105, Emerson Hall
Andrew Connolly, Google Sky Team
Sky in Google Earth
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1pm
Phillips Auditorium, 60 Garden
Alberto Conti & Carol Christian, STScI

Beyond Google Sky

vlk — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:31:42 +0000

Google Sky is good for a quick look “what’s that you just saw over there?”, but not for anything more than that. Not yet anyway. Mind you, I think it is a good thing. It is easy to use, and definitely worth a look as an astronomy popularization tool. But there are a number of astro visualization programs that can (so to speak) beat the pants off Google Sky with one hand tied behind the back. Check these out (all open source):

XEphem : http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/
Celestia : http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Stellarium : http://www.stellarium.org/

There are many more, of varying degrees of usefulness, user friendliness, and price. Your mileage will vary. But for sheer wow factor, hard to beat Celestia.

[Update 10/01]: The e-Astronomer considers how Google Sky could become more useful. Some interesting tie-ins to Virtual Observatory concepts.

[ArXiv] Google Sky, Sept. 05, 2007

hlee — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:46:08 +0000

Ah..Sky in Google Earth made an arxiv appearance [arxiv/astro-ph:0709.0752], Sky in Google Earth: The Next Frontier in Astronomical Data Discovery and Visualization by R. Scranton et al.