My space (page six)

A look at the best ways to explore the cosmos in Sky for Google Earth

Go deeper into stories from cs4fn's space issue

1. See an actual example of gravitational microlensing, the weird phenomenon astronomers are using to find new planets. Above the search bar on the left in Sky, click on ‘Location Search’ and type ‘10:04:34.0 41:12:43.4’. Those are the coordinates for a quasar found by the Hubble telescope, where the lens effect actually makes the quasar look like five stars. Click on the label nearby the quasar to learn more.
2. Keep tabs on the International Space Station, where space tourist Richard Garriott is headed. You can use Rob Simpson’s ISS Locator to track the ISS as it orbits the Earth. Just load it up in Earth mode and you’ll see the flight path and the current location of humanity’s permanent home in space.
3. The Apollo astronauts had only a small bit of the moon to work with, but a lunar internet could help us roam around more. You can see the Apollo landing sites for yourself on Google Moon. And yes, the moon landings were real. So there.