It's up & available to download, definitely sucks it hard. Nothing like Stellarium or other products. I think it's just to give a view, not for the astronomer.
I've just downloaded it and have fired it up. For the serious astronomer or not - I think that it's a potential killer app. For a first attempt it is incredible. The number of people that have now downloaded and used Google Earth is staggering - so to add this feature to the suite brings a tour of the night sky to millions more people who may never have thought of looking otherwise.
You can change your views to include a celestial compass, grids, etc. If there was an option to show a horizon line for you it would suit many, many people. Double-click on an object and Wiki fires up for you giving a full explanation of that object and a decent photo too. You can view the moon and the planets in motion for any given time.
I think that this is a very positive step to give the average Earth-bound non-astronomer a reason to look up and skip around the sky. Well done Google, I have to say. A bit more development and I reckon that it will be very good for most people.
I've just downloaded it and have fired it up. For the serious astronomer or not - I think that it's a potential killer app. For a first attempt it is incredible. The number of people that have now downloaded and used Google Earth is staggering - so to add this feature to the suite brings a tour of the night sky to millions more people who may never have thought of looking otherwise.
You can change your views to include a celestial compass, grids, etc. If there was an option to show a horizon line for you it would suit many, many people. Double-click on an object and Wiki fires up for you giving a full explanation of that object and a decent photo too. You can view the moon and the planets in motion for any given time.
I think that this is a very positive step to give the average Earth-bound non-astronomer a reason to look up and skip around the sky. Well done Google, I have to say. A bit more development and I reckon that it will be very good for most people.
Cheers
Chris
I like the ability to zoom in & see everything, but I personally like the way stellarium does it. They have the night sky & it shows everything when zoomed out, not just a black sky with constellation lines. Horizon line would do some good.
For comparison, here is how Google Night Sky represents "Ruby Crucis" (DY Crucis, EsB 365) compared with Stellarium. Google is using photos rather than graphical representations - sometimes this is good, but probably it's usually bad for our purposes?
Hi Eric I've downloaded the Oceania file so I can have a play and set it up tomorrow. I can feel the brain starting to fade and I don't wan't to muck it up.
It will be interesting to see what my favourite sites look like under the overlay.
