Sky Archives

October 21, 2008

Links: Planet Search, Interactive KML, FlightSim, iPhone GPS

  • Planet Search - Recently Google revealed they had added a new feature to the Sky mode of Google Earth (which lets you see the night sky instead of the Earth). The new feature lets you search for our solar system's planets in the "Fly to" search panel. It then flies you to the location and zooms in so you can see the planet. I like the fact it lets you search for "Pluto" too. Also, if you turn on the "Our Solar System" layer, you can use the time slider to show the position of the solar system planets over the course of the next three months. I wrote a post last year about a KML file which lets you view the locations of planets discovered outside our solarsystem - aka "exoplanets".

  • Interactive KML - Google has announced a new tool to help with learning KML. They have an interactive KML sampler which lets you simultaneously view samples of KML with the Earth API plugin. Of course, you can also copy any KML sample text and then paste it right into Google Earth to view them as well. I did notice a few of the KML samples didn't work properly though.

  • FlightSim - A GEB reader named Jasper sent me an E-mail to let me know about his new tool for linking Google Earth to MS Flight Simulator (MSFS). His tool is called GPS60 (because it simulates Garmin's GPS 60 handheld GPS). The application is very versatile. It lets you not only simultaneously view your position in MSFS also in Google Earth, but it also logs your track and even functions as a TCAS (showing positions of other planes in the sim). Check it out here along with documentation of the features, screenshots, and a log of the changes. He has released several updates recently. This isn't the first time a link has been created between these two apps. Back in September of 2005, someone did something similar (no longer available). But, Jasper's version is available now and has some cool features.

  • iPhone GPS - EveryTrail is a popular site for uploading GPS tracks (and geotagged photos) and viewing them in Google Maps/Earth. They sent me an e-mail a while back letting me know they have released an iPhone application for EveryTrail. Their new app lets you record tracks with your iPhone (I assume this is only practical with iPhone 3G with its GPS ability), and you can also take geotagged photos through their app. Here's the link to their iPhone app page. On another note, EveryTrail's Earth API support disappeared when they started supported Maps Flash API, but they plan to get it back in there soon.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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July 23, 2008

Links: Walking, Havana, Eclipse, Oil, Follow the Boat

  • Walking Directions in Google Earth - Google has announced you can get walking directions in Google Maps. This new capability is in beta since they don't have thorough enough maps on pedestrian paths and walkways to give the most optimum routes. They encourage you to use common sense especially when going to unfamiliar places. But, the routes might help you calculate distances, or get an idea of routes in unfamiliar places. You could also drag the routes to adjust them to go by a park or a particular site. You can also view walking routes in Google Earth. Assuming you may choose multiple destinations, I recommend using a tool from Nearby. First, set up your walking directions in Google Maps. Then select the "Link to this page" and copy the "Past link in E-mail". Then visit Nearby's Multi-destination routing in KML tool, and paste the link. Click the "Get it now" button and you will get a link to "Download Google Earth KML File".

  • Havana Panoramas - 360 Cities has released a hundred high resolution geo-tagged panoramas for Havana, Cuba. You can view Havana at their web site, or you can view all their panoramas in GE - including Havana - using the PhotoOverlay tool. I recommend turning on the Geographic Web layer while sightseeing so you can compare ground photos of these sites to the panoramas from 360Cities.

  • Eclipse - Michael Kosowsky, of HeyWhatsThat wrote to let me know he has created visualizations for the upcoming total solar eclipse on August 1st. The path of totality crosses in Asia and the arctic regions (see the earlier post on the path visible in Google Earth). Michael uses his excellent planisphere application to generate a KML which lets you use the time slider to watch the total eclipse as viewed from Siberia. If you live in that part of the world, you can check to see how your view will look using the same animation by generating your own planisphere (enter your location, then choose the "Animation of the August solar eclipse" option and hit Submit. OgleEarth posts the full details we got from Michael.

  • Oil - Another oil consumption visualization from 'giasen' at the GEC. This one shows oil consumption per state in the US where the height is the number of barrels of oil consumed per square mile (100 meters for each barrel).

  • Follow the Boat - EarthNC is showing off some their excellent navigation and mapping tools for boaters by following one of their customers as they deliver a boat from Chicago to Florida via the Mississippi river. The customer is Captain Bill Foster, and he is using a 3G phone to upload position and web cam photos as he goes along. EarthNC is showing a map along with nautical chart information, live position, and web cam photos in a slick KML for Google Earth . Being able to watch a multi-day trip live in Google Earth is pretty cool. Captain Bill will probably stop for the night in places along the way, and he won't always have good cell phone reception. By the way, yesterday he went through downtown Chicago. Here is a screenshot of the Chicago passage from within Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 13, 2008

Links: Big Dog, Plugins, Smoke, Stonehenge, SketchUp Camp, Kenya

Regular readers should read this one carefully - lots of interesting little tidbits today.

  • Big Dog - A bunch of news writers picked up on this story about a huge dog "seen from space" in the front of a hotel in London. And, you can in fact see the dog (just barely) in Google Earth. However, the imagery is actually from an airplane - not a satellite photo (you can see "BlueSky" in the copyright message - which is an aerial photography company in the UK). Aerial imagery is often better than satellite imagery since its easier to get higher resolution if you're closer to the ground. Read more about Google Earth imagery.

  • Plugins - James Stafford has added a page dedicated to his experiments with the Earth API plugin. I have not yet written about his cute experiment with a mini-flight simulator (I was waiting for some new features like altitude changes). He's added three new applications he's playing with: 1) A polygon editor , 2) put some of his flight tracking KMLs into the plugin, and 3) my favorite - an astronomy application showing stars categorized on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (I'm looking forward to his explanation on how that was done).

  • Smoke - My local TV news station's web site used a Google Maps My Map to explain where smoke from a wildfire was coming from - blanketing the Raleigh area with smoke yesterday. This of course means you could view the map with Google Earth too. So, I had to mention this.

  • Stonehenge - Stonehenge has been in the news quite a bit lately. Saw this video from National Geographic showing Stonehenge being viewed through Microsoft Photosynth based on photos taken by a NG photographer (via VerySpatial). This made me wonder whether Panoramio's new Look Around feature was available for Stonehenge. Sure enough, you can see Stonehenge using Look Around based on photos by many people. And, it works on the Mac as well as Windows!

  • SketchUp Camp - Google hosted Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp this week. Only 300 of 4500 people who expressed interest were able to go. AEC News Randall Newton has been live-blog reporting on 3D Basecamp. So far that's the only source of regular news I've seen from the event. According to AEC News Google is saying there won't be any product announcements at the event.

  • Kenya - Google recently released new street maps in Kenya. According to NetworkWorld students and a team from India were involved in creating the street maps. I believe this is based on Google's methods used for street maps in India which uses GPSes in the hands of many people ("crowd sourcing") to collect data. This way you use local knowledge to enhance the quality of the data. The new street maps are not yet in the Roads layer in Google Earth. So you can compare what they used to look like to now. Interestingly, the very useful Tracks4Africa (which was recently upgraded) and included Kenya with their crowd sourced data - has now been "demoted"/moved to the "More" layer folder in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 13, 2008

Links: New StreetView Stuff, WorldWide Telescope, Yahoo WOE, Dishpointer, GPSAnimator

  • New StreeView Stuff - Google pre-announced new StreetView data for New York City. The data reportedly has higher resolution data. However, so far I'm not seeing the new StreetView imagery. But, those of you concerned about seeing your face appear there - don't worry - Google has used face-detection software that "blurs" the faces in the imagery. The data is also reportedly more recent. I did notice a new "More" drop-down option that lets you turn on Panoramio or Wikipedia placemarks though.
  • WorldWide Telescope - Microsoft has surprised many of us by releasing a beta of their widely anticipated WorldWide Telescope application. Stefan Geens at OgleEarth calls it "stunning", and further says: "this is easily the most impressive thing I've seen Microsoft do in a long time...". I haven't had a chance to try installing it, but hopefully will before the week is out. I'll draw comparisons with Google Earth's Sky mode. Mickey says it has some bugs, but is definitely worth checking out. The New York Times has an interesting article describing both WWT and Google Earth Sky and compares them from a philosophical approach.
  • Dishpointer.com - Stefan at OgleEarth also has a great review of an interesting new web site called Dishpointer. This site will calculate the angle for TV satellite antennas. More importantly, it will let you see it in Google Earth so you can turn on 3D buildings and see if you might be obscured by buildings.
  • Yahoo WOE - Rev Dan Catt announced a new Yahoo capability to offer "Where on Earth IDs". Here's the Yahoo announcement. Dan focuses on the Flickr aspects of using these new ids. Ed Parsons from Google also comments positively on the Yahoo effort.
  • GPSAnimator.com - Got an E-mail from some folks who have developed an application called StarTRAX which lets you visualize your GPS tracks in Google Earth. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but it sounds a lot like GPSVisualizer.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:19 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 17, 2008

New Layers for Google Earth's Sky Mode - April 17

Hubble Cast and other new layers in Google Earth's SkyJust a quick note that Google has updated the layers for the Sky mode of Google Earth (viewable with GE 4.2 or the new 4.3 beta). We last had a big update to the Sky layers in January. So, I'm kind of surprised to see even more data added. But, I'm not going to complain!

So, today's update includes several new layers:

  • Current Sky Events - This layer folder now has two new additions: 1) Hubblecast - a layer of placemarks showing video clips from the Hubble Space Telescope team showing science mini-documentaries on various astronomical topics. The placemarks show the location of the objects discussed. 2) StarDate - StarDate is the public education and outreach arm of the University of Texas McDonald Observatory. These are radio broadcasts available in English and Spanish, and again placemark places discussed in each clip.

  • Education Center - This layer folder also has two new additions: 1) Celestron Skyscout - another astronomy layer which comes from the Celestron telescope company. They have developed Skyscout, which is a "personal planetarium" device that lets you point at objects in the sky and tells you what you are looking at (Read more about Skyscout). I'm guessing this layer is a sample of the content you would get if you had one of these Skyscout devices. 2) Virtual Tourism - this is a much more interesting layer. The layer actually comes from a project by Keir Clarke at Virtual Tourism. He created a Google Maps mashup called Star Viewer which uses the Sky API to show astronomy video clips. Now its a built-in layer for Google Earth's Sky.

There seems to be some problems with the "Our Solar System" layer at the moment. First, there seem to be two copies of each planet in slightly different positions. Double clicking on the planet in the layers doesn't fly you to the location either.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 01:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More entries for this category:

  1. Brightest Object Ever Observed in Google Sky - March 25, 2008
  2. Google Brings Sky from Google Earth to Maps - March 13, 2008
  3. Links: Games, KML, Data, and more - March 04, 2008
  4. WorldWide Telescope vs Google Sky - February 28, 2008
  5. Predict Tonight's Lunar Eclipse with Google Earth - February 20, 2008
  6. Links: Star Viewer, Green Screen, World Hockey, European Pollution, Golden Shadow - January 29, 2008
  7. Links: KML Wrap-up, New Orrery, Zip Scribble, South China Sea - January 23, 2008
  8. Sky Layers Bug - Workaround - January 14, 2008
  9. Google Sky - The Next Generation (Updated) - January 09, 2008
  10. Top 25 Stories of Google Earth 2007 - December 27, 2007
  11. Google Sky with a Maps API - December 16, 2007
  12. Constellation Borders for Sky - December 01, 2007
  13. Links: WSJ Article, Tornado History, Google Sky Exoplanets - November 15, 2007
  14. Planets Layer in Sky Updated - November 02, 2007
  15. Comet Holmes Gets Bright - October 25, 2007
  16. Astronomy Picture-Overlay of the Day in Google Sky - October 10, 2007
  17. Links: Ohio Class Sub, Galactic Delight, Constellation Drawings - October 05, 2007
  18. Beautiful Sky in Google Earth - September 26, 2007
  19. Links: Planet Orbits, SuperOverlay 2.0, GEC 1 million, Google Social Network - September 24, 2007
  20. News Roundup: Poles Overlays, Rocket Garden, Army Topos, Astronomy, Roads - September 20, 2007
  21. Planets Add-on for Google Earth's Sky - September 19, 2007
  22. Supernova Explosion in Google Earth Sky - September 17, 2007
  23. New Update to Google Earth: v4.2.0198 - September 16, 2007
  24. Sky News Roundup: New Horizon, SpaceNavigator, Google plans for Sky - September 12, 2007
  25. Google Earth Sky 3D Animation - Han Solo Escapes - August 31, 2007
  26. Sky Goodies: Hubble Tracker, Sky KML Guide, Horizon Add-on - August 30, 2007
  27. Google Earth 4.2 Roundup - August 27, 2007
  28. Thoughts about Google Sky - August 24, 2007
  29. Censorship in Google Sky? See new Sky Forum - August 23, 2007
  30. More Information on Google Earth 4.2 - August 22, 2007
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