Google Sky is like the planetarium you visited on your third grade field trip, except without the frumpy moms chaperoning.
Captains Kirk and Picard have been telling us for years that space is “the final frontier,” a place reserved for Starfleet Captains and diaper-wearing, boyfriend-stalking NASA-types. But the times, they are a-changin’. The latest update to Google Earth, dubbed “Google Sky,” breeches that final frontier. Like an astronomy lecture geeked on speed, Google Sky lets you boldly go into the starry night from your personal computer.
Google Earth was already, as Peter Griffin might say, “freakin’ sweet.” First, it’s free, and like the old adage says: “if it’s free, take it twice.” Second, it distills life down to coordinate sets. I met my wife at 51_23’34.73”N, 2_22’11.36”W and 34_41’25.23”N, 82_50’5.08”W serves the best damn sandwiches in the Southland. Google Earth allows virtual climbers to admire the majesty atop Everest or browse beachside bungalows in Kingston, Jamaica. So when Google upgraded Earth to include Sky, the app went from “sweet” to “intravenous shot of high fructose corn syrup.”
Google Sky is like the planetarium you visited on your third grade field trip, except without the frumpy moms chaperoning. The application opens showing a black dome scattered with constellations. Browsing Orion, Pegasus and Ursa Minor is as simple as clicking and dragging - the stars twirl and bend to your will. Clicking on designated icons provide stunning views from the Hubble Satellite, making the application like an affordable, high-powered telescope. Much like Google Earth, the hot spots also bring up tasty morsels of information. For example, clicking the constellation Perseus can tell you how Dusty Spiral Galaxies are formed (delicious!).
Perhaps coolest of all is how Google Sky displays the night in real time. Hitting play on the timeline atop the screen sends planets zooming across the universe and shows the Moon changing phases as the days progress. Google Sky traces their arcs, so budding astrologers can see, for example, Mercury crossing Saturn’s path at 8 a.m. on Aug. 17. No wonder I had rotten luck that day!
Dr. J. Bruce Rafert, Clemson’s Dean of Graduate Studies and astrophysics guru browses Google Sky to ascertain planetary coordinates. If he wants to know where Venus will be on Oct. 10 of this year, Google Sky can show the way. Dean Rafert calls Google Sky a “cool tool at the advanced amateur level…a useful url [for] introductory astronomy courses.”
So, in the (slightly altered) words of Captain Jean Luc Picard: “Space...The final frontier...These are the voyages of Google Sky. Its continuing mission: to explore strange worlds, to kill hour after hour of time; to boldly go where the Hubble Telescope has gone before!” If you put on your Spock ears, you’ll hear Trekkers - those infinitive-splitting rapscallions - moaning with bliss.
