If you haven't updated your copy of Google Earth then you should do so right now. A new feature called "Sky" has been added [Celestial add-on points Google Earth at the stars.The image on the right shows us what the sky will look like tomorrow night when Mercury, Saturn, and Venus are close together in Leo. Saturn is going to be very close to Regulus. Unfortunately, the program won't tell me if I can see this from where I live. I don't know if this feature is missing or if I just can't find it.
You can click on the galaxy icons to get more information and you can click on each star to find out it's name, distance, spectral type etc.
Pretty cool. I wonder if Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy will comment? I'd like to know what he thinks of the program.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to see Saturn/Mercury/Leo without blinding yourself - the sun is in the way. Also, Jupiter is at present not in that vicinity; it is near the moon in the constellation of Scorpius - and is therefore visible.
ReplyDeleteTry http://www.stellarium.org/ for an excellent free planetarium program.
The astronomer comment I saw (somewhere :-( ) was that it would be a cool interface to astronomy software that gives important annotation of data. (Quality, sources, references, et cetera.)
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