NPR: Google Adds Space to Its List of Offerings

Google Adds Space to Its List of Offerings

Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Google. Its mission — to boldly go where no online site ... OK, maybe NASA was there first.

Anyway, I digress ... The folks at Google, working together with astronomers, are giving you THE UNIVERSE. Really. As an addition to Google Earth (the feature that allows you to get an up-close and personal look at almost every spot on the planet), you get to whirl around and look out into space. And not just the randomized dots that they generated on Star Trek to make it seem like you were traveling at warp speed.

They are, as The Baltimore Sun described them, "digitized photos — a million of them — stitched seamlessly together from some of the world's most complete sky surveys." One hundred million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. That's a lot of space.

It is wicked cool and one day will be a great way to plan the family's next visit to Wolf 359 or Epsilon Eridani. And, just like Google Earth, you can create a version with your own stuff in space. You know, for Valentine's Day, give your loved one a real star with her face on it; don't just name one after her.

Sky at Google Earth is available on the newest versions of Google Earth, which can be downloaded for free at http://earth.google.com.

11:13 AM ET | 08-23-2007 | permalink

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