Google's new astronomy search tool: "Sky"

Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to view the skies as seen from Earth. Like Google Earth, Sky will let users fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.
“You will be able to browse into the sky like never before,” said Carol Christian, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute, a nonprofit academic consortium that supports the Hubble Space Telescope.
While other programs allow users to explore the skies, they typically combine a mix of representations of stars and galaxies that are overlaid with photographs, Ms. Christian said. “These are really the images of the sky. Everything is real.”Link to article, and you can get Sky by downloading the latest edition of Google Earth: Link.
Microsoft has been developing a similar service, called World Wide Telescope. The former project lead: Jim Gray, a longtime Microsoft researcher who vanished this year during a San Francisco Bay Area sailing trip.