WOW 
Thursday, 23. August 2007
Explore the sky with Google Earth
Is the sky the limit for Google Earth?With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.
Other demonstrations you will find here and here.
Sky offers views of the universe, including high-resolution photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and background information on discoveries and constellations.
To navigate to Sky, you need the latest version Google Earth 4.2. A tiny round black icon with a planet resembling Saturn will then appear in the toolbar. Click on this to switch from Google Earth's Earth mode to Sky mode.
As with the globe in Earth mode, the sky comes dramatically whirling by as one enters Sky mode. Of course, instead of information on countries, cities and historic sites, Sky offers data on moons, planets, stars and galaxies.
Clicking on a red dot within the constellation Sagittarius, for example, leads to information on Globular Cluster M55, aka Messier 55, a cluster within the constellation that was "discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1761 and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1778," according to its write-up, which includes links to the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database and Simbad, an astronomical database maintained by several leading national and international space agencies.
There are, however, a few quirks in the program. For example, the Google Earth pushpin explaining the background of the Eiffel Tower that would normally appear over Paris, France, is visible as one looks at Ursa Major, aka the Big Dipper ...
-- ZDNet news
LOL!