Google Sky - much coolness ;)

[Ian]

the presentation at astrofest on Saturday was pretty interesting, I'd sort of dismissed gSky as a bit of a gimmick, but now I can understand a bit more of the whys and wherefores of it.

Anyway, Dr Carol Christian (of the Space Telescope Science Institute) mentioned add2sky, a tool for adding content to gSky. I've given it a go with my rather mediocre Rosette from a couple of days ago...

http://www.mediafire.com/?8mtz0zzzgzi scuze the odd url, I can't wait until I get home and upload it too my usual web space. Anyway, it's a KMZ file which should be downloaded and opened with Google Earth. You can change the transparency of the image using the slider at the bottom of the places box, above the layers box.

If anyone else thinks it's cool, I'll type up some instructions on how to do it...

[Ian]

http://www.mediafire.com/?csryjkme2wy is my M42 from DSC last year.

[MarkS]

Ian,

You were right - that certainly is cool!
You've managed to register it very precisely with the Google Sky background.

Well done!

Mark

[Ian]

well I'd like to say I sweated blood lining it up, but such is the power of pinpoint astrometry I was amazed at how good the registration actually is. The thing is, gSky is targetted at proper professionals and it shows with stuff like this. They're also working on a tool to do the astrometry for you as well. That'll be impressive given I've got about 10 gig of catalogues on my PC to make pinpoint work...

It's not entirely straightfoward, but I think I'll be doing this with future images I take (assuming they're any good of course)

[Mike]

.............such is the power of pinpoint astrometry.......

You really need to show me how to do this sometime. I have tried it on a few occasions now with mixed results using Maxim.

[RobertM]

Not sure how many people use it but Maxim (the software) might be a good topic for one (or part) of an imaging session ... just a thought ...