Comets and robots

On October 20th, Comet Hartley 2 will swing by Earth, passing a scant 19 million kilometers overhead. If your 15" telescope is at the shop, it's too cold to star-gaze in your pajamas or you're just having a spate of cometophobia, don't fret, we've got your back.

We've teamed up with the great folks at Slooh.com to deliver a live stream of images straight from their user-controlled robotic telescope network into Sky in Google Earth. Our new Slooh layer features thousands of images taken by Slooh users, with new images being added every few minutes.

You can find this latest addition to Sky in Google Earth by clicking on the planets icon at the top of Google Earth to switch to Sky mode. Then, in the layers panel, open the Current Sky Events folder and click on the Slooh Space Camera layer.

Opening any of the icons in the Slooh layer displays a list of images that have been taken of that object, and clicking any of those will load the image into Sky.

Check out our new layer and see what’s “up,” or head over to slooh.com and try it for yourself. It’s fun and free to sign up. It’s even OK to show up in your pajamas