Wow — there's a new version of Google Earth. Among Version 5's new features, are these significant enhancements: detailed ocean floors, historical satellite/aerial imagery, and Mars.

That's right, now not only does Google Earth have a
Sky component, but also maps of Mars, complete with spacecraft imagery and points of interest.

Just what I needed, something else to draw my attention now that my favorite TV shows are gearing back up. Thanks Google!

This just in: A post on the Google Earth Blog notes a hidden feature in Google Mars. You can chat with a Martian near the infamous "face."

One of the Cornerstone Projects for the International Year of Astronomy is for the "Galileoscope," with the goal of creating a small, inexpensive telescope kit that can be given away at star parties. The price ceiling the organizers are shooting for is $10 apiece.

I couldn't help but think of the Galileoscope as I paged through the Sunday ad for the CVS drug-store chain. There was a "department-store" telescope for $15. This model from Vivitar (an $80 value?! Yeah, right) is not quite what the Galileoscope folks have planned for their product.

If I had gotten a $5 coupon from CVS as part of my Sunday-morning purchases of newspaper and bread, I may have bought one already — just for the heck of it. I still might.

It reminds me of the cheap scope I would set up in front of the Learningsmith store in Harvard Square when I worked there part-time. The 50-mm refractor was good enough to show the rings of Saturn, the phase of Venus, craters on the Moon, or project sunspots. And many a passerby appreciated the view.

I dunno. What do you think? Anyone out there buying one?

Last night — the third Thursday of the month — was another Observatory Night at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It was way too cold and icy on the roof to do observing, but the lecture was very interesting. The CfA's Alyssa Goodman talked about her involvement with the WorldWide Telescope (WWT), Microsoft's impressive answer to the "virtual observatory."

An update of WWT was released several weeks ago, but the most notable new feature is a 3-D rendition of the solar system.

People have complained that WWT is "Windows only." This is true, but it's not "PC only" — you can run it on an Intel-based Mac that has Windows installed. A more significant revelation from last night was Goodman's passing mention that WWT developers are working on a Web-browser-based version of the software. She showed a slide (are PowerPoint presentation images still called "slides"?) showing WWT running in Apple's Safari browser — conveniently missing the URL to the site. The presentation was webcast live, and a streaming version will be available in a couple of weeks from the Observatory Night Video Archive.

That means that soon everyone will be able to enjoy the software, including Mac and Linux users. So stay tuned!

On other matters, word comes from a friend that on last night's very special episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (a show I never watch), a murder was solved using the "astro forensics" techniques that you've read about in Sky & Telescope — specifically like those performed by Dennis di Cicco and others by Donald Olson and his teams of enthusiasts.

Looks like you can watch the show online over at CBS's website and probably other venues. I think I can catch it from On Demand from my cable company. Perhaps I'll watch it this weekend, after Battlestar Galactica. (Regarding the latter, if you're recording the show, it will run an hour and 3 minutes. Adjust accordingly.)

And, finally, since it's Friday, here's a bit of astro-fun from earlier in the week. Everyone, even Stephen Colbert, is riding high now that that our galaxy isn't second class to Andromeda.

Is it too late to make a New Year's resolution? I hope to make more postings to my blog during 2009. I'm sure some won't merit being lofted to the status of "homepage news," so you'll probably have to find them under Astronomy Online. They'll be included in the Weekly Bulletin in any case.

Thanks to the Google Earth Blog, this week I learned of a new respectable way to "buy" a star. Instead of merely getting a meaningless certificate, the money goes to help research. In this case, the Kepler mission (as of today, scheduled for launch on March 6th — the same day The Watchmen is scheduled to open!), which will stare at one part of the sky looking for extrasolar planets. For $10, you can "adopt" one of the stars in the field as part of the Pale Blue Dot Project to help fund data analysis.

You can select a star by using Google Earth, or more directly, the Google Earth Plug-in installed in your Web browser. Zoom in and find a good star and note its ID. Then click the Donate button. Adopt one for yourself or someone else, and later you may find out that it has planet(s) orbiting it.

Speaking of sponsorship, have you been listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast? It's the official podcast of IYA2009. You can sponsor one of the shows for $25! Dedicate one of these informational and fun shows to a friend or family member or promote your astronomy club. You can pick a specific date, if it's available. And there are still plenty of open days in the schedule if you want to contribute a podcast of your own. Go ahead, be an Internet star! Visit the website to find out the details.

I'm no fashionista. Luckily, T-shirts and jeans are adequate apparel for the S&T offices. Although I've grown up (a little) to wear more golf-style shirts and other top garments with buttons, I still have drawers full of T-shirts and prefer to wear something that hints of my interests. Over the decades, such apparel has often been a conversation starter. Sporting a shirt or cap emblazoned with Sky & Telescope is also a source of pride.

We used to sell a variety of "logo wear" items. Some of it sold, much of it didn't. So, we stopped selling it. I was finally able to persuade the powers-that-be to put us back in the logo wear business by setting up a storefront with CafePress.com, an on-demand printing company. For the past few years I've run a CafePress store for the alumni of my long-closed high school. The school disappeared more than 20 years ago, so the realm of interest is limited. Nevertheless, we Huskies of Robert E. Peary High School have strong school spirit, so orders trickle in.

We're excited to use CafePress because it allows us to provide a variety of items that otherwise would be prohibitively expensive for us to keep in stock.

Speaking as a T-shirt connoisseur, I've been very happy with the quality of the items I've bought for myself. If you're not, CafePress.com's customer service is top notch. If you have problems with shipping or sizing, the staff is quick to help. A while back, a friend ordered one of my mugs and it arrived broken. She called and they sent out another one — for no cost. That arrived broken too. So they sent a third that arrived fine. If you're unhappy with your purchase in any way, they'll take it back within 30 days and refund your money.

When you visit the shop, be sure to sign up for the CafePress newsletters to find out about special offers, such as free shipping. We'll try to highlight such deals in ads in our Weekly News Bulletin, but we might not be able to if there's a special mid-week promotion.

Here's another reason to subscribe: CafePress often adds items to the product line. The embroidered cap is new to their stock. I hope they will offer other embroidered shirt options in the future. At the moment, the selection doesn't mesh with our rectangular logo design. We'll let you know via our CafePress.com newsletter when new items reach the shop.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the new S&T logo offerings, please write to me at sgoldman@skyandtelescope.com

When it comes to new movies, I tend not to read a lot about them in magazines or on the Web — at least for ones I really want to see. I'll put aside the Entertainment Weekly cover story about a new big-budget sci-fi movie (say, the forthcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still) until after I see the film, because I don't trust the article writers to keep plot points to themselves. I don't want to spoil any surprises. This is the reason I haven't sought details about the upcoming new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. I've seen the trailer, but that's all I want until I go see it after it opens in theaters in four weeks.

That said, I know there's an astronomical angle to the movie. Some of it was filmed at European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), as seen at right. They're having quite a year, being also featured on the National Geographic Channel tonight. I don't know exactly how VLT will be used in the film, though it's probably some kind of weapon — and I don't want to know! But, if you're not like me, check out ESO's promotional stuff about the movie at Bond@Paranal. The Flash movie "trailer" is quite cute, but I'm not going to watch any interview with producers just yet.

Fellow editor and sometime couch potato Dennis di Cicco told us all today at our editorial meeting that if you don't want to watch the last U.S. presidential debate, you may want to tune in to the National Geographic Channel for an episode of World's Toughest Fixes.

I've seen the ads for this show, but have yet to watch it. I'll at least be recording this week's episode airing at 10 p.m. EDT Wednesday (check the NGC's website rebroadcast times throughout the next three weeks). The host, Sean Riley, will be atop Chile's Cerro Paranal to watch (help?) technicians realuminize one of the 8.2-meter mirrors of European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Some amateur astronomers can't live without their Clear Sky Chart, the handy graphic that forecasts such need-to-know atmospheric conditions like cloud cover, transparency, and humidity. The major problem with Attilla Danko's fabulous service is that it's only available for North America — most of it, anyway.

We received word this morning that now the rest of the world can benefit from a similar website built by Chinese programmer Ye Quanzhi. His Astroweather Panel covers everywhere Clear Sky Chart does not. Select a location by entering your geographic coordinates, or navigate through the place names, organized by country, already in the system.

Check it out and please post a comment below with your experiences.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the foundation of NASA. In 1958 the U.S. Congress established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by transforming the four-decade-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency didn't begin operations for two more months, however. So, look for another anniversary milestone on October 1st.

With NASA at 50, you're bound to see all manner of remembrances. During just the past few months, I've seen several TV series and documentaries about the space program.

Last week, NASA announced another birthday-worthy resource: a searchable archive of space photography at NASA Images. This is a cooperative effort with NASA and the Internet Archive, where you can find all manner of interesting stuff, including old movies and the famed "Wayback Machine" that will show you what many websites looked like oh, so long ago.

After receiving the press release last Thursday, I eagerly went to the site, but didn't get much further than the opening screen. The following days were better, but I still run into slowness. As I was writing this, I got the error message: "NASA Images is experiencing high load, please wait 30 seconds and reload."

The site is a bit different than the NASA Planetary Photojournal or other image repositories. NASA Images is set up like "light box" software, in which you search through the database using keywords to display thumbnails images, and then you save them to your "workspace." This is the electronic version of laying out slides on a light box. With thousands of images to pore over, it's a good way of keeping track of the images you might be interested in without losing track of some of them. And it's not just photos; there are movies too.

Of the images I looked at and downloaded, the pictures were of decent size for computer-display use (about a megapixel). So they would be great for a school project, newsletters, or a PowerPoint presentation, but barely enough resolution for, say, publishing very large in Sky & Telescope.

The site offers ways of embedding the images into a website of your own and otherwise sharing images you find with friends, but I didn't attempt either of these features.

There's lots to look through at the site — and all public domain! Happy hunting.

The Astronomical League began its annual meeting today in Des Moines, Iowa. It's a combined meeting of the AL and the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO). J. Kelly Beatty left this morning to attend the conference where he will give a talk tomorrow.

Among the other events throughout the next two days will be an awards ceremony that will include presenting the League's Webmaster Award. The distinction is given to "acknowledge the club Webmaster who does an outstanding job of website design and administration." The winner was announced late last week.

So if you see Del Gordon, congratulate him on winning the 2008 AL Webmaster Award for his work with the Huachuca Astronomy Club in Arizona. Based on his submitted portrait, he seems like an easy-going guy.

Second place went to Chas Rimpo of the Howard Astronomical League in Maryland.

Third place went to Richard Richins of the Astronomical Society of Las Cruces in New Mexico.

Once again I was happy to be a judge in evaluating the 10 submissions. Other judges were Drew Carhart, the 2006 Webmaster Award winner from the Naperville Astronomical Association, and Matt Ganis, who works at IBM.

Our evaluations were tallied by Bob Schneider, of the Boise Astronomical Society, administrator of the Astronomical League Webmaster Award.

If you missed the film when it was on PBS last September, or if you just want to watch it again (perhaps you've since gotten yourself an HDTV), Timothy Ferris's Seeing in the Dark returns to public television next week.

You'll need to check your local station for broadcast time(s). I discovered that despite being told months ago that it would air on Wednesday, June 11th, as of today, Boston's WGBH doesn't have it on its schedule for that day. It is, however, showing days later on another PBS channel. I also checked the PBS station in Washington, DC, and it does have it on the schedule for 8 p.m. on Wednesday.

Students and teachers can still request use of the Internet-accessible telescope built for the show. See the program's website for more details.

And speaking of TV, another program to be aware of is When We Left Earth on the Discovery Channel. That six-episode series will air on the next three Sundays (two episodes per evening). Have your DVRs ready!

One of the nice things about working down the road from a major center of astronomical research is that sometimes one of its ancillary activities is worth walking up there to see.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics keeps its researchers informed and entertained by inviting other folks to give talks.

A particularly interesting one happened last week, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, TV personality, and director of the Frederick P. Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York's American Museum of Natural History, gave a presentation called "Delusions of Space Enthusiasts."

I enjoyed it a lot — and now everyone can see it. The talk is up on the CfA website for you can watch as streaming video (using RealPlayer). The full talk and Q&A period last about 90 minutes.

Don't be put off by the highfalutin "colloquium" moniker for the talk. Despite addressing a bunch of mostly astrophysicists, Tyson speaks as a regular guy and touches upon many aspects of space, history, and the mass media that may have you pondering them well afterward.

Feel free to delve into other presentations in the colloquium series, but I can't promise that they'll all be as accessible and entertaining.

I don't recall exactly where and when I first saw the orders-of-magnitude movie Cosmic Zoom, the lesser-known precursor to Charles and Ray Eames's film Powers of Ten. But ever since then, I have been fascinated by them both and all manner of representations of scale.

Weeks ago, fellow editor Kelly Beatty forwarded me a link to a web-based variation of the theme at, of all places, the website for camera-maker Nikon. The Universcale is an interactive, multimedia version of the powers of 10. It gradually takes you from the entire universe to within an atomic nucleus, from 100 billion light-years to 1 femtometer (1 trillionth of a millimeter). You can pause along the way to read about the objects representing sizes, and and you can skip around and watch the universe zoom by.

If you want to confine yourself to our solar system, Alan Taylor has a handy poster that's a to-scale comparison of all known bodies larger than 200 miles wide. Check out the rest of Taylor's site for more thought-provoking fun, including a list of the longest drives that Google Maps can generate. I've wondered something similar: where and what's the longest drive that brings you back to your origin if you only make right-hand turns (or only left-hand turns)?

Finally, here's something if you're like me and are fascinated by massive construction projects, especially those implied by sci-fi movies (oh, the poor workers who built the Death Star only to have it blown up — twice!). You'll enjoy browsing Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions. How's that for some perspective?

Software giant Microsoft is now reaching for the stars with the release of its WorldWide Telescope (WWT). This mega-program caught some media buzz back in February when developers made a public showing at a tech conference. At long last everyone can give it a spin.

Tuesday's official unveiling marks the program's release as a "public beta," which means that while it isn't really a finished product, it has reached the point where most of the significant bugs have been squashed and people will be able to use it successfully. Future updates down the road will add new capabilities. WWT will probably always be "in beta," since it'll remain a free download.

The software is for computers running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista. While that means it won't run in Mac OS, you can still operate it on an Intel-chip-based Mac. In fact, some of the developers happily run WWT on their Macs.

The first step is to download and install WWT itself from WorldWideTelescope.org. As you explore the program, you'll undoubtedly notice the "Communities" menu — a feature with great potential. From within WWT, you can participate in "clubs," and partake of special content as part of that group. Eventually, you'll be able to create your own clubs.

We're all pleased that Sky & Telescope is one of the inaugural communities. If you're a registered user of our website (it's free), you can enroll in our community to get bonus material. Selecting "Join a community" from WWT's menu takes you to the sign-up page on our website. Click on the link to download a small file that will place the Sky & Telescope Community within your copy of WWT. You then see the icon at right upon clicking the program's "Community" tab.

So what does being in our WWT community get you? For the time being you'll receive four types of add-ons:

Tours. I worked up a sample sky tour that you can play on WWT. It was somewhat easy to produce — considering that there's no WWT user's manual yet! I was often reminded by the program's developers that making a tour is so easy that a 6-year-old can do it — and one did (it's in the program). Although I'm not a multimedia maven, I wanted mine to look a little better than a 1st grader's. We'll provide more tours soon, which will be automatically added to the Tours folder of the S&T community. And you'll be able to contribute your own.

Image collections. We've made many of the submissions to our Photo Gallery accessible within the WWT, much like how images from the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes are in the main program.

Context to articles. When linked to our community, you'll occasionally see an S&T icon at the bottom of the screen as you browse the sky. This leads to a link to additional information about a celestial object from SkyandTelescope.com.

Constellation figures. Besides the default set that comes with the program, you can download and install constellation lines that match those in S&T's monthly star charts and in our Pocket Sky Atlas.

I'm proud to say that we at Sky & Telescope had a hand in shaping the software. Initially the program was intended as an interactive, multilayer sky atlas — kind of a "virtual observatory" focused on deep space.

But after discussion with now-outgoing S&T editor-in-chief Rick Fienberg and subsequent back-and-forths that I also participated in, we were able to open the eyes of the developers Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay to expand the realm of WWT to include capabilities suitable for the backyard.

Our input led to the inclusion of solar-system objects and the Moon's phases. We're able to offer you our customized constellation figures because the WWT team built the tool for us. As a result, you can create your own figures too.

There are so many aspects of WWT that I won't even try to describe them all here. You can explore and compare the sky at a variety of wavelengths. You can connect your computer-controlled telescope using the ASCOM protocol. You can peruse detailed panoramas of Mars. You can select a galaxy and then search professional literature for references. And much, much more.

My advice? Watch the introductory tours to learn your way around the program — and then left- and right-click on everything!

There aren't many opportunities to link baseball to astronomy, but here's a cool one I found out about this morning from the Universal Hub blog that I check daily (OK, a few times a day).

Tom Guilmette, a cameraman for the local sports network, NESN, used the mount from a computer-controlled Celestron telescope to shoot some time-lapse movies of Fenway Park before and during games of the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox.

You'll find one here. And another one here. And a third one here. Or, just browse Guilmette's videos on the site.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did, even if you're not a member of Red Sox Nation.

Update: The videos were pulled off the site linked to above on May 1st. Sorry. You can still check out the photographer's website and see some photos of the camera/mount setup.