Sky is not the limit; Google earth now reaches to Sky

NI Wire

New Delhi

Sat, 25 Aug 2007: 

Aug 25: Google search engine has tried to capture the mystery of the sky through its new venture Google Sky. It is the beta version of earth that include a Google sky featurthat allow to get close with over 100 million galaxies and 200 million star.

To view the star, on your window, download the recent version Google earth software, launch application, go to view and select to ‘switch to sky’, zoom in to see the blazing star, black hole, constellation.

Images from the system come from six research institution, including the Polar Observatory in California and the United Astronomy Technology Centre. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. High-resolution imagery comes from the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Digital Sky Survey Consortium.

Dr Carol Christian of Space Telescopic Science Institute said, "Never before has a road map of the entire sky been made so readily available and Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."

Dr John Mason, of the British Astronomical Association for amateur astronomers, said that Light and air pollution has become so bad in many area that can be seen when one looks up and realizes what they miss will be good on this part.

Dr Francisco Diego, from the department of physics and astronomy at University College London, described the program as an "imaginative, powerful and unique tool". He said, "Just as we are about to celebrate the 400th anniversary of telescope astronomy, this initiative will open a new window for anyone to be able to appreciate, explore and discover our fragile position in this”.

Ed Parsons of Geospatial product development group, Google Earth + Sky, described the tool as “the same tool, looking up"

After the launch of Google earth in 2005, Google also had launched Google Mars, to view the Red Planet, Google Moon to see Apollo moon lending. NASA provides these images under an agreement signed in 2006 between Google and NASA.

This new search engine will prove beneficial for astronomers and those who want to open the mysteries of space.