Saturday, March 01, 2008

A Clap for WikiSky and Google Sky

WOW! Technology is definitely moving faster than we can grasp. The discovery of Microsoft WWT has brought to my attention two other technologies that have beaten Microsoft to the stargazing software arena. The first being Google Sky who has already launched itself with the newer versions of Google Earth. Now not only can you look at Earth and zoom down to street level, but you can turn the gaze up and look at the night's sky. Unbelievable!



Seriously mind-blowing!



Download it now and take a look for yourselves. Another technology I was aware of but caught my eye as I was looking at Google Sky is KML (Keyhole Markup Language). This is an XML-based language which was originally built by Keyhole Inc. - the creators of Google Earth. The KML file specifies a set of features - placemarks, images, polygons, 3D models, textual descriptions - for display in Google Earth, Maps and Mobile or actually any other 3D earth browser (geo-browser) implementing the KML encoding. Pretty neat huh?

This has led to some amazing applications like for example watching the animation of international flights on Google Earth and a scary simulation of water level rising. You can see this @ here!
and watch it in the Google Earth application.

Another stargazing technology I came across is WikiSky @ Wikisky.org. This freaking blew my mind! I've recently gotten into astronomy again after long years of absence. This comes at a wonderful time.



We have come a long way with technology. There are even virtual moon trips coming up! Imagine this...going to the moon in virtual reality. You can read all about this here. This should be coming up in a year. This will allow people to hitch rides on probes to the moon and watch as the lunar robots explore the surface of planets. This will all be in real-time and will allow everyone to participate in space exploration. WOW!

I'm glad though that I ordered my telescope. So far I can see that these two portals into the night sky are just knowledge providers and will in no way replace real astronomy. They will definitely greatly help the astronomy communities around the globe and are welcomed as an amazing innovation. They are truly grand! I can't wait to explore some more!

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