Comments on: Sky map!

By: Jorg

Jorg — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 06:41:29 +0000

Well, it’s kind of cute, but I am a big fan of XEphem: and travelling isn’t a problem, since I run it on all my machines, including my laptop and I can get datasets from miscellaneous catalogues and surveys and pipe them into my fv or ds9, so all is good…;)

Of course one needs Linux for that.

And, sky-map couldn’t find NGC869 for me; oh well…

By: Sky Map | LifeParticles

Sky Map | LifeParticles — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:06:12 +0000

[...] Map. Just what you’d think. [via] Powered by Gregarious [...]

By: Sky Map « Mr. .NET

Sky Map « Mr. .NET — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:41:52 +0000

[...] 29 03 2007 via the Bad Astronomer, Sky Map is like google maps but for the night [...]

By: Gilles

Gilles — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:39:07 +0000

Sky Map doesn’t work on a MacintoshÂ ; this software lacks Intelligent DesignÂ !

By: John Armstrong

John Armstrong — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:16:10 +0000

James: actually, I’m not surprised at the hexagon, and I’m not sure why the astronomers in the article are either. There are a lot of metastable spherical harmonics with hexagonal symmetry, and some with rather low angular momentum numbers. For a convection pattern to arise and be reinforced by that sort of harmonic shouldn’t be so surprising.

Of course, spherical harmonics are all because of a Lie group, back to this week’s math news.

By: John Phillips

John Phillips — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 01:16:22 +0000

This is a cool site, nice one. Another free download worth a play is http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Even better, there is a version for Linux, Windows and Mac as well as source code as it is a OS/GNU project. It also has a neat add on donwload section as well as instructions for creating your own.

By: bswift

bswift — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:48:41 +0000

Google probably won’t buy it. I’m sure they have something better in the works, as they’ve recently partnered with the LSST project.

By: thaumaturge

thaumaturge — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:43:10 +0000

Hah, Google will probably buy it, like they did Writely. Google Earth, meet Google Sky. That would be awesome.

By: James Pyrich

James Pyrich — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:54:17 +0000

Speaking of Saturn…

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:00:26 +0000

While we’re talking about good astronomy, I’ll put in a plug for another website useful for backyard astronomers: http://cleardarksky.com. My friend Attilla takes forecast data from the Canadian Meteorological Centre and massages it to produce “sky clocks”. A sky clock, in Attilla’s words: “It’s an attempt to show at a glance when, in the next 48 hours, we might expect clear and dark skies for one of many observing sites”. 1900 observation sites currently listed, with more added as requested.

By: Thad Hatchett

Thad Hatchett — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:22:48 +0000

One complaint. Very minor.

This sky map does not show solar system objects. This is not obvious unless you read the FAQ. Typing in Saturn in the search takes you to the Saturn Nebula.

Overall, a very cool piece of work!

Thad

By: The Squid Zone

The Squid Zone — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:04:44 +0000

On-line sky globe…

This was pointed out over at Bad Astronomy. It is an interactive sky-globe, similar to what you would get with, say, Starry Night, but free and on-line. This is something that’s quite cool because Starry Night (which is what I…

By: Sue Mitchell

Sue Mitchell — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:35:06 +0000

Hoorah! Back to astronomy.
–

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 10:57:42 +0000

I use Starry night, but sky-map is going as a bookmark on my mobile devices that can’t run the bigger software!

By: mis 3 quarks » Otros 3 quarks: 27/03/07

mis 3 quarks » Otros 3 quarks: 27/03/07 — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:41:33 +0000

[...] AstronomÃa 2.0Sky-map, una aplicaciÃ³n en lÃnea para observar las estrellas. VÃa Bad Astronomy Blog. [...]

By: Dulouz

Dulouz — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:40:50 +0000

Even better, download this free software. It really is fantastic:

http://www.stellarium.org/

By: csrster

csrster — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:06:00 +0000

I think there are still some bugs to ironed out. I asked it to find Saturn and it took me to a 12th magnitude deep-sky object in Aquarius.

By: John Armstrong

John Armstrong — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:59:30 +0000

Of course, God (er…) forbid they make it work for Safari.

By: ioresult

ioresult — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:32:06 +0000

Google should really do it.

By: Michelle Rochon

Michelle Rochon — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:04:32 +0000

How cool! That’s like a google maps for the sky! Very handy indeed (I prefer softwares though. No load time.)

By: bswift

bswift — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:59:09 +0000

Fun! I wish someone would build a server to serve all sorts of surveys (DSS, SDSS, 2MASS, etc.) with something like this or the Google Maps API. I’ve thought about doing it from time to time if I had a little more time.