Cool Sky Map Site
I just found this site and have been messing around with it today: skymap.org. It’s an interactive sky map ala Google Maps which allows you to browse the night sky in a pretty trivial manner. It also has a SDSS mode for showing images taken with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Here’s a screenshot taken from their help pages:
Image Credit: SkyMap.org
It’s a really good tool for getting familiar with deepsky objects like galaxies, nebulae and stars, but not for things like the planets or the Moon.
The SDSS mode is quite stunning, although a little slow on the connection I was using when I was playing with it.
They’ve also developed and API to allow webmasters to put up static images and dynamic maps, this is something I’ll have to experiment with more. A lot of work went into this, and it performs quite well.
Let me know what you think…
Technorati Tags: night sky, observing, sky maps
Related Stories
POSTED IN: observing the night sky, stars
2 opinions for Cool Sky Map Site
Rúni Bang Larsen
Feb 27, 2007 at 9:52 am
Very nice link.
1st impression is very good. Gonna go play alot with this.
Ed Minchau
Feb 28, 2007 at 6:35 am
Hi, I maintain the Space Blogroll, a list of all the space-/astronomy-/rocketry-related blogs that I can find. I recently added your blog to the blogroll; including yours there are now 172 blogs on the blogroll. If you would like to add the Space Blogroll to your sidebar, you can find the necessary code for that here. If you don’t want to add the space blogroll, that’s ok too, you’re on the blogroll regardless.
I also run the Space Feeds aggregator, which brings together the 50 most recent space blog posts from over 120 blogs (including this one), the 50 most recent news stories from three dozen space news sites, astronomy picture of the day, NASA TV, astronomy podcasts, and loads of space-related links (including SkyMap; thanks for that link). You might find it a useful tool.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: