Google Sky Lets You See Stars and Planets From Your Web Browser

Google Sky is a star-viewing option in the Google Earth desktop application. Now Google is turning Google Sky into a Web browser application. You can see pictures of the galaxy, moon and mars in a browser.

Up until now, users were able to look into the starry skies via the Google Sky option in the computer program Google Earth. Now, however, anyone can look at the same skies in a browser without downloading any programs.

Google product manager Lior Ron talked about this in his blog post, saying "Sky in Google Earth, which launched last August, was originally available to our 350 million Google Earth users…This release brings the universe to every browser and makes Sky accessible to just about anyone with an Internet connection -- from school children to professional astronomers -- in 26 different languages."

Ron said this project was developed by a Latin America Code Jam finalist, Diego Gavinowich from Buenos Aires, who worked as an intern in Google.

Google Sky is available on the Web at sky.google.com. You can search for planets, Hubble telescope images, listen to Earth & Sky podcasts from various Astronomers, and explore historical maps of the sky all from your Web browser. Click any of these links to explore Google Sky.

Some of the highlights of Google Sky are:

* Powerful search lets you browse tens of thousands of named objects.

* Three optical sky surveys show you what your naked eye would see if it had a really good zoom lens. Try switching to infrared, microwave, ultraviolet, or x-ray to see the sky in a completely different light. Or blend between these views to create unique visualizations on the fly.

* Galleries highlighting the best images from Hubble and many other telescopes.

* Current planet positions and constellations.

* Overlays of custom KML content. (Simply paste a Sky KML URL into the search box, just like on Google Maps.)

* Last but not least, the Earth & Sky podcasts gallery is not to be missed, particularly for those who run a classroom.

Microsoft also is developing a similar program called Worldwide Telescope which looks like it will be event better, but Google is the first to make this available for the masses.