Slooh is, by the way, a company that deals in astronomy.  It describes itself as "an online Space Camera that streams live views from robotic telescopes stationed in the Canary Islands, Chile and Australia."

As for the new pact, it involves the launch of a Slooh layer in Google Earth, and said layer is supposed to feature photos of over 35,000 celestial objects.

What’s more, according to an official statement, "Google will also broadcast Slooh’s live astronomy missions inside Google Earth and other media properties to Google’s global audiences.  This feature will provide a live coverage feed of celestial events such as lunar eclipses, enhanced with audio narration by Slooh host and nationally renowned astronomy luminary Bob Berman."

So it looks like Google Sky is really taking off, if you’ll pardon the small pun.

Anyone who’s still worried about the expense of all this might at least note that Google Sky is less likely to incur government investigations and lawsuits than Street View, too.

The online virtual telescope has been created in response to Google’s launch of Google Sky a few years ago, and takes things to the next level with a huge database of high resolution images from various stars, galaxies, and other non-earthly entities. Ray Gould spoke about WorldWide Telescope back in February and noted that some of "the best images from the worlds greatest telescopes from earth and in space are woven them seamlessly to produce a holistic view of the Universe."

"The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe," said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. "By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe."

WorldWide Telescope, Much like Google’s Earth & Sky products, is offered free and is currently available for download. While the user interface is quite different, the overall experience is very similar. WorldWide Telescope has a more modern and sleek interface than Google Sky, but in the end both have about the same to offer.

I prefer the Microsoft interface with easy graphic thumbnails to take you directly to the celestial body. Personally I find that this new beta release offers a higher level visual experience, which is why I would likely turn to it in the future.

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 Gates Says WorldWide Telescope Coming

Bill Gates, who has been traveling through Asia and dropping interesting comments for several days now, confirmed the release while in Indonesia.  "This is taking data that’s very complex, gathered over many years from many telescopes, and making it accessible," said Gates, according to Dan Nystedt.

Since an earlier version of the thing made Robert Scoble cry, it seems safe to assume the WorldWide Telescope’s at least somewhat impressive.  A promotional Microsoft video shows several children pulling funny faces, too, so the product has that in its favor.

The official description only reveals, "WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience."

Keep your eyes open as May draws to a close, then.  And keep a few tissues nearby, just in case.

Google Hides Flight Simulator In Earth

The Internet (the anonymous collective) has given credit to University of Cape Town student Marco Gallotta, a computer science major, with discovering that by pressing the right keys while checking out Google Sky (they’re totally different keys for OS X, mind you) users are given a choice of flying an F-16 Viper, for those that like to boogie, or a Cirrus SR22 prop plane, for those that prefer the scenic route.

(Editor’s note – Now I’m not one to perpetuate a stereotype or anything, but um, Marco, a computer science major, was tinkering with Google Earth and blogging about it on a Friday night, and not tinkering with, well, other, prettier things on campus. Just sayin’. Come to college in the States, Marco…with a name like that and a funky accent, you won’t have time to tinker. Just sayin’. — Jason)

It’s unclear why Google sneaked a gem like this in there, but seeing as it has a bunch of apocryphal commands to find it, the flight simulator was intended for guys just like Marco. Not exactly the mile-high club they were talking about.

Google hasn’t totally disowned it. At least since the discovery, they’ve put up a Google Earth Flight Simulator keyboard control guide. Unsurprisingly, there are no instructions on how to unhook a brassiere.

There are flight demonstrations on YouTube, however, if you’d like to view them. From the videos, it looks a bit videogame-ish, and reports say the keyboard and mouse controls are a little difficult. So better buy a joystick. 

I’ll give it six weeks before somebody complains that terrorists are using it for training exercises. Until then, cheers.