I hate to say it, but the quality of images in Google Sky is awful. Their compression is choppy, with whole chunks missing and the wrong color. If
you want to see good images, there are real tools like SkyView (
skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov... ) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (
www.sdss.org... ) and the research-grade Aladin Sky Atlas (
aladin.u-strasbg.fr... ). Seriously. I was excited when I heard about Google
Sky, only to zoom around and see garbage in almost every field of view. I don't know how they can let this image set sit there for month after month
when better images have been available on the web for years now -- it's embarrassing.
Anyone who is cataloging the image errors in Google Sky is wasting their time. They use the same image sources as the other sites I mentioned, they
just mangle them all. Check out the good stuff and see how it compares.
Also, if an object is in medium Earth orbit, its location on the sky depends on the observer's location on earth, due to simple triangulation. Any
exact position given could vary by a few degrees if you're on the other side of the globe.
And the guy who claims that space junk shows up in every space image has obviously never seen good astrophotography. Aircraft lights do foul up a lot
of photos, but space junk, no. It is absolutely false that as you focus on a distant star you're imaging "a huge part of the sky". Most sky
photos cover only a few arcminutes -- less than a millionth of the sky. Even the simplest reckoning says you'd need over a million chunks of BRIGHT
space junk before one will "always" be in shot. I know of very very few ground-based images of even the brightest objects in orbit. Though the
shape of the Space Station can just barely be made out from a mid-range telescope on the ground.
Have fun exploring the sky, but quit talking rubbish, folks.
Sorry for the anonymous post, but I'm really tired of signing up for new websites & forums. If you're going to flame me (because you always flame
anyone who actually knows something), you can call me ScottV.