The view from the Sky
Posted by
Ph.D., former astronaut
It's true: astronauts have a great view! When I was
orbiting Earth in the space shuttle, I had the unbelievable
experience of being able to float over to a window and look back
down at our planet, then off into space at the stars. Absolutely
spectacular!
These days my feet are closer to the ground, and my mission
doesn't involve circling the Earth. I run a science education
company, Sally Ride
Science, that creates entertaining science materials for
elementary and middle school students and classrooms, so I'm
always looking for cool tools that can engage kids and help them
learn more about our world.
great, and we plan on using it in some of our programs. (Read more
on the
Google Lat Long blog.)
As you can probably tell from
the video I did on Sky with a Google engineer, I always loved astronomy. I even put
together (OK, with the help of some folks at Sally Ride Science and
Google) a special KML showcase of some of my favorite extra-solar
places — nebulae where stars are born, remnants of exploding
stars, and even a bunch of stars that have … planets orbiting
around them! (No, scientists haven't found any like Earth
yet.)
If you know any kids or teachers who like astronomy, send them to
Sky (the resource
page is a good start) — and tell them to check out the Sally
Ride Science KML feature.
