What Matters 2 Me

Google has had the excellent stand alone application Google Earth out for several years now which includes the ability to deep view the sky. Now they’ve just come out with Google Sky, Moon and Mars for the browser. From the website: “This tool provides an exciting way to browse and explore the universe. You can find the positions of the planets and constellations on the sky and even watch the birth of distant galaxies as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.” And precisely like Google Maps you can zoom in for greater detail, zoom out for increased coverage, and pan all around. It has three overlays: Infrared, Microwave and Historical . Each of the overlays’ transparencies can be adjusted to see the underlaying stars, etc.

Check it out at: www.google.com/sky

Google Moon includes three view types: Apollo, Visible and Elevation, plus a Charts overlay. I haven’t figured out yet if the coverage is of the entire moon or just a section of it. My guess is it’s just the side facing Earth. The charts overlay is impressive – the charts include such color-coded information as names, ridge lines, etc. Also you can choose between geologic and topographic overlays.

Google Mars is very similar to Google Moon, except the three view types are Elevation, Visible and Infrared, and it doesn’t have a Charts overlay. Several months ago Google Maps introduced a “Street View”option whereby you could get a “car-eye” view of a section of street. Wouldn’t it be cool if Google Mars also did this using data from the Mars rovers?