Paradise Tour with ... Google Earth

After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers using Google Earth, the Google search giant is about to turn us into virtual " astronauts ."

A new service inside Google Earth has just been unveiled today with the name " Sky ", allowing users to enjoy and admire the sky on a computer screen as seen from the Earth. You can fly around any planet and zoom in close-up to observe about 100 million stars and 200 million different galaxies.

"You will be able to hang out in the universe in an unprecedented way , " said Carol Christian, an astronomer from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Some existing programs and websites also allow you to explore the sky, but in essence, they are just static, soulless images that are further explained by the next word."But Sky is the real picture of our sky."

The " Sky " photo gallery is compiled from more than 1 million photos provided by Google sources, including the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory and NASA's Hubble telescope.

Google representative said the company developed this project because of "interests" but never intended to make money from here.

Great interaction

Just like with Google Earth, individual users and organizations will be able to "override" the original image of "Sky" of all kinds of other data, from audio files, maps, photos to animation and writing. version . Sky itself has provided a number of "layers" of reference data for users such as: Basic knowledge of the galaxy, the position of two planets after 2 months and adding a drawing only lead the position of the moon .

"This will be a great educational tool," commented George Djorgovski , an astronomical professor. "Never exploring the earth is so lively and interactive."

Before Sky, Microsoft also studied a similar project called the World Wide Telescope. However, the head of the project, Jim Gray, went missing earlier this year after sailing on San Francisco Bay.

To use Sky's service, users first have to download the latest version of Google Earth to the computer from http://earth.google.com.

Trong Cam