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Wikisky.org’s Interactive Sky Map

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One of these days, I’m going to find myself a nice dark place out in the country and rediscover the sky.
When I was a kid growing up, I was fortunate enough to live on farms out of town for many of my childhood years. That meant nice dark skies.
Combine those happy circumstances with a red-lensed flashlight and a good book on constellations, and I could point out some pretty obscure examples of them when I was ten years old.
One I particularly remember was Lepus, the hare.
Well, even though I live in the bright glare of Wal-Mart’s headquarters nowadays, I was happy to see via today’s FamilyFirst pick that Lepus is still right where I remember it, due south of Orion.


Today’s pick is Wikisky.org’s Interactive Sky Map. It’s based on the Digital Space Survey 2. Here’s what they have to say about the technology behind the site:

DSS2 consists of thousands of high-quality photographs of outer space made by powerful telescopes located in the mountainous regions of America and Australia. Using an original technology, SKY-MAP.ORG has “tiled” these space photographs to cover the entire sky sphere, combine and match the pictures accurately with their real sky counterparts. The volume of DSS2 is huge. It would require a display of approximately 625000 sq. m. to view the entire survey at the same time in its full resolution.

It’s amazing, and loads quickly on a modest broadband connection. Enjoy.
http://server6.wikisky.org/?locale=EN


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