Google Sky Now Available Through Your Browser

Ars Technica brings word that Google Sky, formerly only available as an extension of the Google Earth software, is now accessible through your web browser. The interface of Google Sky is quite similar to that of Google Maps, complete with search and alternate views by spectrum. The story also mentions (and more importantly, links) ten of the more interesting sights. We discussed Google Sky's initial release last year. Quoting: "Visible light only shows us a small picture of the entire universe; non-visible spectra such as ultraviolet (UV), infrared and X-ray hold a whole other world of information. Here is where Google Sky becomes very cool. There are three more sections that highlight fantastic images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the GALEX Evolution Explorer (UV), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (IR). What makes these very cool is that under each selected body there is a slider that will change the displayed image back and forth between the visible and invisible spectrum."

Re:Google Maps Off the Map

[IamTheRealMike]

Hey Doc. I work on Maps and sometimes debug weird customer-reported problems like this.

Here's The Real Mikes three step guide to diagnosing and fixing Google Maps problems:

1. Create a new browser profile, using "firefox -ProfileManager". This effectively clears your cache, cookies, extensions and other settings that can interfere with maps. Does it work? If so, go back to your main profile and (in this order): clear your cache, delete your google.com cookies, revert any changed settings (especially network settings) in about:config, and finally start disabling extensions and then plugins (in particular, RealPlayer if you have it). If you have any web accelerator type mods to your Firefox, revert them too.
2. If that doesn't work, the next step is to look at your home router. Disable any firewall it may have, in particular, watch out for the "max pending connections" or "synflood protection" settings. Make sure they're either off or set really high. You may need to reset your router after doing these things.
3. Finally, try loading a satellite tile URL directly in your browser: http://kh0.google.com/kh?n=404&v=25&hl=en&t=trtqttrrttqts [google.com] - do you see a tile? If you get a connection timeout, but regular google.com works, see step 2 above. If you see an error page talking about viruses, make sure you're only using Google Maps/Earth to view imagery and not any other app.

To be honest, from your description it sounds like the first step will yield the most fruit - I include the other two for completeness (if people see Maps load just fine but you don't see the roadmap or satellite images themselves, those two steps can help). Probably your cache has corrupted somehow, either that or some of the files Maps needs aren't loading. If you can't figure it out and know how, I'd suggest watching what happens with the Live HTTP Headers extension.

Re:Wouldn't Google Sky be more useful if...

[glwtta]

Then you could actually see that the bright object in the SE sky in the morning really is Venus, etc.

There's already plenty of software to do that: http://www.stellarium.org/ [stellarium.org]

Re:Wouldn't Google Sky be more useful if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this Planisphere service:

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/ap.html [heywhatsthat.com]

It does exactly what you describe: project the horizon on Google sky from your current location's perspective.

Re:Wouldn't Google Sky be more useful if...

[Chris Brewer]

For a browser-based version: http://www.heavens-above.com/ [heavens-above.com]

Do not forget the hyphen - I tried going there by trying to remember the URL, and ended up somewhere that is NSFW

Re:Google Maps Off the Map

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks, I figured it out, and fixed it :).

It was a config:

general.useragent.extra.firefox.InternetExplorerSignature
user set
string
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)

I deleted the value and (right-clicked to) reset it, restarted Firefox, and all was well :).

Deleting cache and cookies didn't change anything. I used (firefox -ProfileManager) to create a test profile, which worked OK with maps.google.com . So I progressively copied directories files from my failing profile to replace their counterpart in the working profile. I deduced that prefs.js was causing the failure. So I recreated a new working test profile, copied my failing prefs.js into it, progressively deleted preference lines from the failing prefs.js until I found that it was that pref. Then I retested to see that that pref was the only difference, and deleted it using the about:prefs page GUI in my failing profile. Presto!

Thanks for helping. I'm back on the map :).