Google Sky

For people in the Boston area, a cornucopia of talks on Google Sky in the near future.

  1. Hunting for Needles in Massive Astronomical Data Streams
    Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 4pm
    Room 330, 60 Oxford St.
    Ryan Scranton, Google Sky Team
  2. Inside Google Sky
    Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 8pm
    Room 105, Emerson Hall
    Andrew Connolly, Google Sky Team
  3. Sky in Google Earth
    Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1pm
    Phillips Auditorium, 60 Garden
    Alberto Conti & Carol Christian, STScI
4 Comments
  1. hlee:

    First two talks were fantastic. The first one was great from a statistician’s point of view and the second one was superb in terms of using Google sky to explore the universe so easily. Not only getting pretty images but one also can navigate the universe of different wavelengths and could get relevant informations: overlaying images of various telescopes by adjusting the transparency tab, searching data archives related to the image (SIMBAD is linked with other individual data archives), and Google scholar to find out scholarly works related to the image/object. Unfortunately, I don’t have resources to explore this Google sky for a better explanation and scientific (astrostatistical) purposes. The readers of this slog are very much recommended to explore the Google sky.

    04-09-2008, 10:01 pm
  2. hlee:

    A lengthy conversation with my office mate about the use of Google sky from a scientific view point led me to comment again. Since I have direct resources (ADS, SIMBAD, CDS, links to direct archives, and most of all astronomers around me), I don’t think I’ll use the Google Sky at the current moment. But consider a statistician full of ideas, looking for data sets to apply her/his ideas. During a conference, he/she hears another statistician who is collaborating with local astronomers and presents statistics based on the data set provided by these astronomers. The data set enlightens this statistician in the audience who wants to apply his/her statistical idea to the same data set. A direct contact to those astronomers may be the solution but any Google Sky type portal services ease this statistician’s burden. Quickly this statistician will have understanding of the data set via exploring the Google Sky while he/she fetches it from the linked archives provided by the Google Sky. Even he/she can find all interdisciplinary works related to the target data set. There still might bugs and false images but the way Google develops the Google sky seems to accelerate scientific collaborations and education. Terrific job they did in a short amount of time. Yet, I’m afraid that a business mind will eat up the wonderful spirit.

    04-10-2008, 10:14 pm
  3. hlee:

    Came back from the last talk, which seemed to be a repetition of the 2nd talk with different perspectives (the 2nd talk speaker from Google and the last speakers from STScl). Personally, I like to see in the near future how effectively this Google Sky embraces people from other disciplines and to congratulate their efforts toward the goal.

    04-15-2008, 1:57 pm
  4. vlk:

    Have they fixed the Pleiades problem yet? :)

    04-15-2008, 6:23 pm
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