Earth Science Bonanza: Google Earth Adds the Night Sky

If you aren't using Google Earth as a teaching tool, you're missing a great resource (a free one!). It just got better! According the the Machinist tech newsblog on Salon.com (it's free, but you have to watch an ad), you can see far more of the universe through Google Earth than you can from your backyard. Look around. Zoom around. Go broad or go deep space....Makes us want to teach Earth Science again! Here's the scoop from the Machinist:

Google has added the heavens to its Earth. In the latest version of the company's geographical browsing software Google Earth, you'll find more than a million astronomical photographs stitched together to give you a deep picture of the sky.

The software will display diagrams of constellations, Hubble telescope pictures of the far reaches of the galaxy, and animated graphics of the planets and other bodies as they move in the sky. The sky portion of Google Earth is also, like the earth, fully searchable. Type in "pinwheel galaxy" and the software zooms you there -- or anywhere else among 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

Astronomers are delighted by the new feature; several tell the New York Times that it could get kids excited about astronomy.

Get Google Sky in the latest Google Earth.