http://earth.google.com/sky/index.html
Google Earth now (and apparent since August 21st) supports a new view mode that lets one see a representation of the night sky. Like the regular ground view, the sky (‘space’) view uses a large amount of images to create a somewhat seamless picture that you can manipulate.
I found out about Google Sky last Tuesday when I went to a demonstration of the software as a part of a Google employee recruitment effort, but a post-doc astronomer who worked with his professor and Google to create the software was there, and he was able to explain the software in depth.
Apparently, Google is hoping that the Google Earth interface, along with its KML, will make it much easier for non-astronomers to have access to the huge quantity of data by using Google’s massive resources. The astronomy community is hoping that people will contribute various observations and possible anomalies that may have gone unnoticed by dedicated astronomers.
If you update or download Google Earth, the new feature should be ready to use. :toad:
[ot]Because I am about a month late in noticing this feature, I thought that it was more appropriate to place this topic in C&G.[/ot]