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April 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WikiSky: Google Earth for the Heavens
We all know how useful tools like Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth have been to understanding what's out there on our lovely planet earth, most of us are just lost when it comes to the heavens above. First of all, depending on where you live, light pollution might make seeing the night time sky impossible, unless you count the moon and maybe Mercury and Venus. Thankfully, though, the folks over at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have put together wikisky.org, which is kind of like Google Earth for the heavens above. Using a cool graphical interface, visitors can zoom in or out on stars or constellations, pulling up detailed astronomical data collected from SDSS's survey.
SDSS is an ambitious sky mapping project that wants to create detailed optical images covering more than a quarter of the sky, and a 3-dimensional map of about a million galaxies and quasars, according to the Wikisky Web site.
Check it out.
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 6, 2007 11:28 AM
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Where I work we are haveing a conference on Google Earth, the presenter is from Columbia University where he gives classes there.
Posted by: Elaine at April 6, 2007 01:51 PMQuote: "...unless you count the moon and maybe Mercury and Venus."
You might want to amend that to "...Jupiter and Venus." Mercury is hard to see at the best of times, because it never gets very far above the horizon or very far from the sun. Thus, it's always seen shortly after sunset or before sunrise. If you live in a light polluted area you might never see it.
Jupiter, on the other hand, gets very bright (second only to Venus), high in the sky, and depending on where it and Earth happen to be, is often visible all night long.
Posted by: K. Boriskin at April 9, 2007 04:14 AMTOP STORIES
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