Google Pittsburgh turns imaging heavenward

Aug. 23--Google Inc. empowered computer users to zoom in on a city, a block and even backyards with Google Earth. Now it lets them reach for the stars, too, for free.

The Internet search company's software engineers in Pittsburgh on Wednesday started a new feature -- called "Sky" -- as part of its Google Earth satellite imagery-based mapping software product.

Andrew Moore, director of Google's Pittsburgh Engineering Office, said the engineers began to wonder about a year ago whether they could provide a way to look upward from Earth and easily pinpoint hundreds of millions of stars and planets.

"As often happens with Google," said Moore, "this was the right set of people at the right place at the right time. We spontaneously noticed people with astrophysics interests hanging around, people with friends at NASA and at other data providers."

The right place in this case was Carnegie Mellon University's Collaborative Innovation Center in Oakland, where Mountain View, Calif.-based Google set up an office last year that now employs more than 50 software engineers.

Sky didn't develop as part of Google Pittsburgh's mission, Moore said during an event at the Oakland center to show off the tool that uses images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other devices that survey space.

Engineers at the center have been working on four major projects: data collection, the way computers understand text, the Google's payment system and its advertising quality, he said.

But Sky came about simply because it was the kind of cool idea that develops around the pool table or over lunch, Moore said, and is polished during evenings and weekends.

To get to the free Sky feature, computer users must download Google Earth (http://earth.google.com). Once installed and operating, users can click on "Switch to Sky" from the "view" drop-down menu at Google Earth, or click the Sky button on the toolbar.

From there, they can see images that show planets and constellations and provide information. They can watch supernovas growing brighter and then fading, and zoom into a gas cloud to see a star being born.

Andrew Connolly, a visiting astronomy professor from the University of Washington and a participant in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey since 1993, yesterday used Sky to show pictures of galaxies colliding and signs of a black hole in space.

"Stars are born, they grow old and die, and sometimes they explode," Connolly said, and Sky viewers can watch the movements and changes and perhaps be the first to zoom in on a galaxy at the edge of the universe that's currently visible.

Tom Reiland, director of the Wagman Observatory that the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh Inc. operates in Frazer, hadn't tried Sky, but said it promises to be useful to amateur astronomers and even some professionals.

Hobbyists who are starting out "need some sort of source because they don't know where to find books and catalogs and star charts," he said, although several sources now are available via Internet.

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