Interactive Space Atlas, Stage 1

So, checking out Google Sky, I just used the "hand" icon to grab a fistful of the known universe and drag it two inches to the left.

I think there's something to be said for that.

The bad news about Google Sky is that you can't really use it to zoom right up to planets and see them in all their high-res glory, which is kind of what I was unrealistically hoping for: cratered planets, burning suns, and "stars" expanding out to become galaxies and all that. It's not like a road map, either, or even like a political map. Nothing's labeled.

It's actually even a little unintuitive trying to get the names and close-ups of the celestial bodies you might be looking at while you randomly browse the universe. The easiest way to figure out what's what is to use the search function and ask it to point you at something in particular --only then does a label show up.

Even then, though, all you get is an awkwardly (almost comically) pasted-in picture of the celestial body over the larger star-field, which, even though it changes size as you zoom in and out, still kind of disrupts your sense of cosmic perspective.

There's also a lot of holes -- places where they didn't have the data to fill in any picture at all. That's the worst part. They really ruin the aesthetic experience, but I suppose it's better than false advertising-- putting "black sky" in places that might turn out to be full of stars.

Still, it's great to have dragging and zooming features applied to something like the night sky, where the distances are so difficult to wrap your mind around in the abstract. There are also some cool features that let you check out the same sights using different spectra. What it needs most, I think, is an optional label overlay so you can browse without everything looking like anonymous colored dots.

Check out Ars Technica for a full review combined with a list of "must-see" destinations in the universe.