Googling the sky

Almost everyone who has discovered GoogleEarth has been amazed at the fascinating amount of terrestrial data available through a simple interface. Many astronomers and amateurs have noted that something like GoogleEarth would be a great interface for astronomical data. It is now a reality and is called Sky in GoogleEarth. The two presenters of this talk, Carol Christian and Alberto Conti, came to the GoogleSky project along separate trajectories, but in 2006 joined forces to present the concept to the GoogleEarth team. They worked with their colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute to assemble the data and images for GoogleSky. This talk will briefly describe how GoogleSky works, what the GoogleSky community is all about and demonstrate some of the new add-ons available for it.

Back to conference programme

 

About Carol Christian

Dr Carol Christian is the Education Director for the National Virtual Observatory Project. She also is the Deputy of the Community Missions Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), a unit that provides technical support from the Hubble Space Telescope to other astronomical observatories and data archives for various NASA missions. She also is a key member of the team who created Sky in GoogleEarth. Carol was previously Head of the Office of Public Outreach at STScI where she created the Amazing Space online curriculum materials program. Dr Christian received her PhD in Physics and Astronomy at Boston University and has worked at several observatories as well as on NASA missions.

Carol Christian’s home page
Wikipedia entry

About Alberto Conti

Alberto Conti is an Italian astrophysicist in the Community Missions Office at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore. He is one of the creators of the GoogleSky concept. He received his PhD in astronomy from Ohio State University with a thesis on the physics of galaxy formation. He has been at STScI since 2003. In early 2006, he sent a proposal to Google to extend the Google Earth interface to space-based data. The GoogleSky project, co-led with Dr Carol Christian, was officially released to the public in August 2007. Conti and Christian continue to work on its development.

Alberto Conti’s home page
Wikipedia entry