Google has already conquered Earth. Now, the world's most popular search engine is turning its attentions to the heavens. The media giant yesterday launched a service called Google Sky that aims to bring the mysteries of distant galaxies to a computer near you.
The add-on to the successful Google Earth whose bird'seye view of the planet is beloved of TV news graphic departments as well as hundreds of millions of internet users, offers a "virtual telescope" into the further reaches of the cosmos.
Using thousands of high-resolution images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope it promises to allow users to float and zoom in on more than 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.
"Never before has a road map of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team. "Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."
Dr John Mason, of the British Astronomical Association for amateur astronomers, said: "Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars. If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing."
Dr Francisco Diego, from the department of physics and astronomy at University College London, described the program as an "imaginative, powerful and unique tool". He said: "Just as we are about to celebrate the 400th anniversary of telescope astronomy, this initiative will open a new window for anyone to be able to appreciate, explore and discover our fragile position in this vast and amazing universe."
To begin searching the universe online, users can scroll dizzyingly around a 3D map of the constellations from Andromeda to Vulpecula before clicking for a close-up and explanation of what they are seeing.
The images were compiled with the help of Nasa from research by scientists around the world. Among them were the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observation in California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre which provided 20 years worth of images from the skies above Britain. And users can enter their postcode and get a pollution and cloud-free image of what the sky should look like above their home.
Since Google Earth was launched in June 2005, more than 250 million people have downloaded it, combining satellite imagery, maps and 3D graphics to create an interactive atlas of the world now available in 13 different languages. Users can access the new free service by downloading the newest version at
www.earth.google.com
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Topic: Forget Google Earth. Welcome Google Sky! (Read 848 times)