Latest New's:New free Google Sky turns computer into virtual telescope, planetarium

The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away with Google Inc.'s latest free tool.
A new feature in Google Earth, the company's satellite imagery-based mapping software
allows users to view the sky from their computers
The tool provides information about various celestial bodies, from stars to planets, and includes imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope and other sources. It also allows users to take virtual tours through galaxies, including the Milky Way, from any point on Earth they choose.
"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope," Lior Ron, a Google product manager, said in a statement.
The new software also promises users the ability to see planets in motion and witness a supernova.
There are other programs that provide information and pictures of the universe, but Google Sky blends it seamlessly, said Andrew Connolly, a University of Washington associate professor of astronomy and part of Google's visiting faculty program.
"What's unique about this is you have all of the imaging data over the whole of the sky actually streaming. So I can look at something that covers most of the sky, say our Milky Way galaxy, and I can zoom right into a tiny galaxy that's in the formation cycle," he said.
Google engineers stitched together "terabytes and terabytes" of images and other data, Connolly said. A terabyte can hold the text of roughly 1 million books.
"Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Current Google Earth users must download a new version from http://earth.google.com. The software works on computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.
Google, the leading Internet search engine, already provides surface images of Mars and the Moon through its website, along with animated and satellite-based maps of Earth.

Is Google's Sky Falling?

What happened in the fourth quarter is that [Google] didn't maintain earnings momentum. They overspent 50 percent revenue growth -- that's really hard to do. So, Google has a rap that it's earned that it has no control on its spending because it has world imperial ambitions," said Precursor analyst Scott Cleland.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) shares dropped nearly 5 percent in the wake of a report by research firm comScore that pointed to a flattening in clicks on the site's ads.
comScore reported flat year-to-year performance in Google's paid ad clicks for January -- its 532 million clicks actually decreased 0.3 percent. This likely was the "primary catalyst" behind Google's most recent stock price fall, the research firm noted.
Google shares were up nearly 2 percent, at US$472, midday Wednesday on the Nasdaq stock exchange. However, the stock had fallen to $464.19 at the close of business Tuesday, down $283.05 from its 52-week high of $747.24, achieved Nov. 7.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Larger Context
So, Google's latest downturn is a reflection of a free fall in the U.S. economy? Not exactly.
Its troubles are nothing a little fiscal self-discipline wouldn't fix, according to Precursor analyst Scott Cleland, who follows the California-based search giant closely.
"First of all, there's this latest downturn, but you need to understand it in the larger context," Cleland told the E-Commerce Times.
The Economy's Impact
A number of analysts have tied Google's downturn to the slumping U.S. economy.
"I think there's a combination of factors here," Andrew Frank, an analyst with Gartner (NYSE: IT) , told the E-Commece Times. "Clearly, there's the fact that markets tend to amplify news -- good or bad. But there's also, I think, some interesting things happening in terms of the way the business is transitioning and the way Google is attempting to stay ahead of it."
One gambit Google is trying is de-emphasizing ads with lower profit potential. "If consumers are buying less and clicking less on Google links, then Google is going to have to find more sources of revenue, and I believe that will be larger advertisers switching from traditional channels like TV and print media," he added.
However, said external factors, such as the economy, aren't the real source of Google's travails. "In the second quarter, investors were very surprised at how many people Google hired," Cleland said. "Not only were they overspending in the summer, but they were pledging to spend in the third quarter."
Meanwhile, company sales and earnings were off-kilter. "They had good third-quarter earnings, but by the fourth quarter, revenues were up 51 percent but earnings were up only 17 percent. They broke earnings momentum," he noted.
Satisfying Ambitions
Most investors have a "momentum bias," which makes the stock attractive, Cleland commented. "That means, if your company is growing earnings on a consistent basis, investors want to own the stock. What happened in the fourth quarter is that they didn't maintain earnings momentum. They overspent 50 percent revenue growth -- that's really hard to do. So, Google has a rap that it's earned that it has no control on its spending because it has world imperial ambitions. The bottom line here is, investors have figured out that Google is not being run to reward shareholders but to satisfy the ambitions of its founders."
Nevertheless, Google remains the dominant company within the online advertising industry, "with healthy growth prospects" that likely will lead to increased market share, Bear Stearns said in a note.
However, don't count out the economy as a factor, Clayton Moran, a Stanford Group analyst, told the E-Commerce Times. "We believe the economy slowing is reducing the rate at which consumers search and buy online and thus is having a negative impact on Google."
Generating ads isn't a Google-specific problem. "[Google's] growth rate is decelerating. Given that Google's stock has been a highflier driven by momentum, this recent shift in operating momentum has had a dramatic impact on the stock price," he added. "We think Google remains in a strong position but that its stock is unlikely to reward investors in the near term.

Google Sky brings the heavens to a browser near you

Google has unshackled its heavenly Google Sky from Google Earth and made it available to the hoi-polloi through any web browser

The material on offer includes some nice Hubble snaps, Chandra X-ray, GALEX Ultraviolet and Spitzer infrared showcases, and a historical layer showing how past generations viewed the vast majesty of space. There's more, including an ominous-sounding "Earth & Sky Podcasts" button, but we decided not to open the airlock doors on that particular piece of Web 2.0.
The big advantage of the new offering is that it'll allow users to share simple links, rather than the .kml files used to disseminate Google Earth locations. The disadvantage is, on first look, that the web-based version runs a lot slower than its Google Earth app counterpart - similar to the difference in performance between the latter and Google Maps.
Nonetheless, if you'd rather be sucked screaming into a black hole than download an application from the world's fave search monolith, then this alternative offers hours of fun for all the family. Happy intergalactic surfing. ®

announcements about Google Sky

By now you've probably heard the announcements about Google Sky - the new module in Google Earth. If not, the videos below will bring you up to speed.

It's certainly a step in the right direction and I applaud anything that brings astronomy and an awareness of the night sky to a wider audience. But what's presented falls short of what any decent planetarium software can provide in terms of what's above your head at any given time and date.
Where it has put a foot right is with the inclusion of Hubble images (in their correct positions in the sky. There's more information on that in this Hubble News Release.
The Google folks are smart people and every project has to start somewhere. Right now Google Sky is more of a cool photo album than a real piece of interactive software. It's fun to play with - for a few minutes. About all you can really do is click on things to see pretty images.
Maybe Google are looking for feedback on what direction to proceed with this project. If they decide to go down the planetarium route, providing charts for what's in the sky at any time as seen from any given locvation on the planet, then it will begin to match what's availabale in current software and begin to realize its potential.
You'll find Google Sky here.
These videos give more information on what Google Sky is about and how you can use it to explore:

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.

Google Sky

When Google Earth came out, one of my first thoughts was how cool it would be to have an application like this for the sky. Google Earth is massively useful, and a planetarium app would be too.
Well, today, Google has released a version of Google Earth that maps the sky.
I don’t like it.
You read that right. I don’t like it. Well, to be clear, I don’t like it yet. I think this version is lacking some basic necessities, but once they (and some tweaks) are added this will be a pretty cool app.
For one thing, when I clicked the button to start it, it said it was loading the sky above my current location. However, it doesn’t tell me what that current location is. It doesn’t tell me what time of day it’s using — the sky moves, so time is crucial. It doesn’t move the sky in real time (or provide that option). It doesn’t tell me if the Sun is up or not. It doesn’t tell me where the horizon is.
These are all relatively simple things to put in, and I’m sure Google will install them eventually. But it seems odd not to have them available in the first release version.
There are some oddities. When I click on, for example, the Owl Nebula (a classic planetary nebula in Ursa Major) it displays an almost illegible image of the object. The description is fine, but the icon says it’s a globular cluster! Oops. That was the first image I clicked. How many more are there like that?
The red dots marking objects tend to actually cover the objects, making it hard to see them (in the Crab Nebula it covers the pulsar, so I can’t see it without making the dot disappear, and it’s not obvious how to do that). It’s not obvious how to zoom in and out (turns out it’s by double left and right clicking, but I found that by accident — that must be a feature of Google Earth in general I didn’t know about).
In the search box, if I type in my home address and go there, it sends me to a location in the constellation of Auriga. I suspect that’s what is directly overhead right now, but it doesn’t say!
There are some nice things, of course. Lots of objects from Hubble are integrated into the maps, for one, as are images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (some odd image artifacts got in as well that should have been cleaned up, for that matter). The star maps are not bad, though patchy in spots. There are ctalogs of objects as different layers, which is useful. Zooming in and out is too slow for my taste (I’m impatient) but the way the stars appear and fade during zooming is nice, and that’s not easy to program so I’m impressed with how they did it.
But still, I’m scratching my head over why they left out so many obvious and necessary features in the first release. I think Google Sky can be a great tool, I really do, but to be a useful planetarium app it needs work. The enormous benefit of Google Earth is twofold: it allows you to interactively examine the Earth, and it allows people to add homemade features to it if they know how to code them or where to find them.
Interactively examining the sky is nice, but Google Sky needs work. It’s more of a gee-whiz photo album than a real piece of interactive software. IMO most folks will play with it for a few minutes and then stop using it, since at the moment it isn’t much more than a clickable way to look at objects on the sky. Once real interactivity is built into it — a way to see what’s up now, or tomorrow night, or on my trip to Alaska at 2:00 a.m. — it will begin to realize its potential.
Imagine if users can add their own images, for example. Or it displays satellite tracks in the sky, or where deep space probes are, or where Hubble is pointed right now, or where Jupiter will be in October. Google Sky will be an incredibly cool tool and will have real staying power… but it needs some more basics first. Until then, I’d rather go straight to the Hubble site to view images, and if I want to know what’s up now, I’d rather use some free apps to map the sky.
C’mon, Google folks! I know how smart you are! Get this rolling. Add these basic features, and you’ll find people using this software in droves. And you can add me to that list.

Google Sky Now Available Through Your Browser

Ars Technica brings word that Google Sky, formerly only available as an extension of the Google Earth software, is now accessible through your web browser. The interface of Google Sky is quite similar to that of Google Maps, complete with search and alternate views by spectrum. The story also mentions (and more importantly, links) ten of the more interesting sights. We discussed Google Sky's initial release last year. Quoting: "Visible light only shows us a small picture of the entire universe; non-visible spectra such as ultraviolet (UV), infrared and X-ray hold a whole other world of information. Here is where Google Sky becomes very cool. There are three more sections that highlight fantastic images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the GALEX Evolution Explorer (UV), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (IR). What makes these very cool is that under each selected body there is a slider that will change the displayed image back and forth between the visible and invisible spectrum."