SKY-MAP.ORG

SKY-MAP.ORG (or WikiSky.org) is a wiki and interactive sky map that covers more than half a billion celestial objects. Users can view the whole star sky at once and zoom in to view areas in greater detail. WikiSky includes many stars, galaxies, constellations, and planets, but it is still in development. Users can also edit information about different stars by writing articles, adding Internet links, uploading images, or create a special interest group for a specific task. The website, although still available for users to visit, has not shown much activity since 2010.

Software

Users may browse the sky in several surveys, including GALEX, DSS, and SDSS. In either mode, the user can access the name and a brief description of visible objects. This can be used to access more detailed information, including articles and different photo images.

SKY-MAP.ORG also has its own API so that code can be written to access maps, objects’ information and SDSS data. The API that has more functionality than the interactive part of the website currently uses.

Star chart

A star chart or star map is a map of the night sky. Astronomers divide these into grids to use them more easily. They are used to identify and locate astronomical objects such as stars, constellations and galaxies. They have been used for human navigation since time immemorial. Note that a star chart differs from an astronomical catalog, which is a listing or tabulation of astronomical objects for a particular purpose. Tools utilizing a star chart include the astrolabe and the planisphere.

History

Prehistory

The oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk that was discovered in Germany in 1979. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion. A drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France has a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. Researcher Michael A. Rappenglueck has suggested that a panel in the same caves depicting a charging bison, a man with a bird's head and the head of a bird on top of a piece of wood, together may depict the summer triangle, which at the time was a circumpolar formation. Another star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion grotto. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a pattern representing the Pleiades just above it. The Nebra sky disk, a 30 cm wide bronze disk dated to 1600 BC, bears gold symbols generally interpreted as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, several stars including the Pleiades cluster and possibly the Milky Way.

Sky Map

Sky Map is an Android planetarium software application.

History

Sky Map was designed and developed by a group of Google engineers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of their 20% time.

Licensing

On January 20, 2012, Google announced a student development partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and released Sky Map under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

Code

The project is presently available in the form of a Google Code repository.

See also

References

External links