I’ve mentioned in the past how much I love Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Mars…

We need Google Skies…

after watching today’s APOD post I got to realizing I’ve never seen the heavens in such a way, zooming from ‘eye’ level to high powered close up of some celestial object.

My imagination could accommodate such ideas as satellites flying around planets, and robots crawling planetary surfaces, of blobs of gas and star refuse floating along the cosmos sittin’ pretty…

but how it relates from a here-to-there perspective, the progression from naked eye to high power zoom…
yes there are simulators. Some fantastic ones, but they aren’t actual photographs, they are computer generated objects based on real space-time mathematics. Astounding, yet still there’s a certain detachment from the user in real-space.

watch this again, or if you haven’t already, you better watch it at least once!