I love gazing at the stars, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so due to pollution. On a recent visit to Pushkar, I managed sky gazing at night on a borrowed telescope. Sadly, I failed to differentiate between the Canis Major and Canis Minor. Now, if only I had a reference to guide me through the celestial bodies. My prayers were answered on August 22 when Google announced the launch of Sky, a free tool built into their new version of Google Earth. After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth, Google is now hoping to turn them into virtual star gazers. Though Google is not the first to launch such a program, the imagery and combination of all objects in other programs made them difficult to manage. Celestia and Stellarium were two good options, but were available only to Linux users. With Sky, you could be on a Windows or a Mac, even Linux, and still operate it. Google Earth Sky lets you fly around, zoom in to see detailed imagery of about a 100 million stars and nearly 200 million galaxies. The Layers feature lets you explore pictures from the Hubble space telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles, and not limit you to the dots on the screen representing stars. You can overlay the night sky with galaxies, constellations, lunar paths, basically watch what you wish. If you are new to star gazing, features like the Backyard Astronomy will help you see bright stars with naked eye. What I do not like about this new tool is that when you start, it says “loading the Sky above my current position”, something the Google Earth doesn’t ask for. So I’m not sure what position it is talking about. Also, it doesn’t show the sun or the horizon, so using the program as a reference for actual star gazing is not really possible. Though these are small issues that Google may iron out in the future, for now I’d rather stick with Stellarium or Celestia. Sky is like a visit to the planetarium, where you can look at the sky, a galaxy, a constellation—but what you really want to see requires great effort. Surprisingly, even when Google Earth was launched, no one liked it. But now that the program has been refined, it helps one with directions (most streets are named on the maps), you can zoom in to the nth degree and it has the capability to make 3-D buildings. Soon, this will happen with Sky, and the hunt for your own starship enterprise could take place through the cosy comfort of your bed. Download the Google Sky at earth.google.com.
