Re: Web-based Google Sky

Andrew Smallshaw wrote:
On 2008-05-09, pjwholm@xxxxxxxx <pjwholm@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am quite amazed about how little exitement Google Sky has produced
on this forum. There were even nonsense arguments against it like "you
can´t use it in the field" (as if it were possible to store its
database in a laptop). Nonetheless, and admitting that it is not
(yet?) perfect, I am sure to not be the only reader here who flipped
on it. So in order to inform those who feel like me and avoid them
some possible confusion, I will finish up with my little monologue
here.

I've only looked at Google Sky briefly but I didn't really find it
to be that good. I'm sure it's great for casual users who want to
look at the pretty pictures of space-type stuff - Google Earth as
a whole seems to be used mainly for toy value than anything else.
For astronomy though the question is what does it offer that other
packages don't? As has been noted it needs an internet connection
and it isn't the fastest program in the world as a result so there
needs to be some killer feature for it to be the first choice.

There isn't such a feature.

In fact it seems a lot more restricted than many of the more focussed
packages. I'm an Xephem user user which may not look as pretty as
some of the other packages but it is fast (most of the time),
flexible and accurate. Others are Skymap, Cartes du Ciel, Stellarium
and doubtless others that do not immediately come to mind. The
question is not "What is wrong with Google Sky?" but "What does it
have over these other packages?"


Nothing here against Google Sky, but I'd already gotten comfortable with Stellarium and Night Vision. NV is a Java based program that will work on almost any machine, whereas the some of the others require more system resources to run well.
.