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Google Earth Looks At the Sky

Friday, August 24th, 2007

I last referenced Google Earth Linked blocked by Bess in the spring to make mention of an exceptionally good visual presentation of the crisis situation in Darfur compiled by the United States National Holocaust Museum.

In its latest release, Google Earth has added Sky Linked blocked by Bess to the list of features available in this tool.

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

Screenshot thumbnailThis tool has great potential for astronomy explorations. Key items are clickable and provide a more detailed description. Downloadable or custom-created tours make this resource still more useful for guiding your students through your specific instructional topic.

Downloading of Google Earth software v. 4.2 or better is required and will most likely involve your district’s tech coordinator due to both permissions and filtering software issues. Though a couple of the above links are marked as “blocked Linked blocked by Bess“, once the application is downloaded and installed on a computer, it plays well with filter restrictions.

Target Grades: 3+ for demonstrative purposes, higher for independent use.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Google Earth Looks At the Sky”

  1. Martha Miller-Plumb Says:
    August 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am

    Chad,

    This spring, I printed some of the free pictures from Hubble and have them displayed in my room. The addition of stars to Google Earth is great. I know, I know, I teach English but this is just great stuff and I enjoy SciFi.

    Also, the last time that I checked, Google Earth hadn’t updated the Biloxi/Gulfport/New Orleans area recently. I have interest, as my husband and I traveled there this summer to work with Habitat for Humanity.

    Thanks for keeping us updated!
    Regards,
    MMP (AKA Prof_Plumb)

  2. Martha Miller-Plumb Says:
    August 27th, 2007 at 12:26 am

    —Continued—
    I meant to ask how often the free version of Google Earth is updated.
    Thanks,
    MMP

  3. Chad Says:
    August 27th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    That’s a good question and a downside of the tool – at least in our region. Where you’re looking has a great deal to do with the age of the imagery. For example, a great amount of growth has occurred along the U.S. 250 East in Ashland. Based on the images of that area and the businesses that do and don’t appear, I would estimate that to date back to at least 2001.

    The official Google answer is:

    “How old is your satellite imagery?

    Google Earth acquires the best imagery available, most of which is approximately one to three years old.

    We add data to our Primary Database on a regular basis. You can view a list of these additions on the following Google Earth Community page:

    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/latest

    You may also want to stay informed through The Sightseer, our monthly newsletter which highlights all of our latest data additions. If you’d like to subscribe, please visit http://earth.google.com/sightseer_signup.html.“

    (Source: http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21414&ctx=sibling)

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