• Reuters, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:45 AM

Google Earth is expanding its scope to include the stars in the sky, the company said Tuesday. The search giant, whose Earth program gives users anything from an astronaut's view of the earth to street level images, wants to turn the service into a playground for stargazers. It's hard to imagine how Google could make money from this, although you can imagine it will soon integrate Google Earth images into its results.

"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian, who was recruited to co-lead Google Earth's Sky team. Christian also works for the Space Telescope Science Institution. The sky initiative allows users to zoom in on more than 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. It would be super-cool to zoom in on close-up satellite images of Mars and Jupiter.

It's a fantastic learning resource. The program will provide a user's guide to galaxies, thanks to images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. Other third parties that contributed to the project include the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Of course, the program will constantly be updated.

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