I think I've broken it...

Trying to find some way of getting the sky view to open with the current time, instead of a month ago (and to find out what things do), I checked the lower boxes in the clock window. Now I've no time bar and the Time options in the main View menu are greyed out.

How do I get the time bar back?

And is there a way to open the sky view "at present"?

(the user guide http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/ug_sky.html doesn't appear to be up yet.)

edit: time bar back; I un-checked the sky layers primary database, then re-checked entries under it.

The orientation of the sky is set up so that it's showing the current sky above where you were last viewing the Earth (or at least what it would look like if there were no Sun out). After that initial orienation, you can go ahead and navigate to any point on the celestial sphere.

The time slider is just for the Moon and Planet layers (or any other time-based kml layer that you've got active). For those two layers, the positions of those icons are set according to the time displayed on the time slider. If you press "Play" or move the slider, you can see how the positions of the Moon and planets change over time.

Hence, if you let the animation play for a bit and sync up with your current time, you'll see their positions right now. The extra month was added just to give a bit of context for the motions that you're seeing now.

Ryan,

Re: "Hence, if you let the animation play for a bit and sync up with your current time, you'll see their positions right now."

Is there a way that the times on the time slider can be adjusted?

For example, assume that the slider can accommodate 12 discrete times. And the times that it currently has set at these slider positions are:

July 22, 2007, 12am
July 22, 2007, 8am
July 22, 2007, 4pm
July 23, 2007, 12am
July 23, 2007, 8am
July 23, 2007, 4pm
July 24, 2007, 12am
July 24, 2007, 8am
July 24, 2007, 4pm
July 25, 2007, 12am
July 25, 2007, 8am
July 25, 2007, 4pm

Can I change the times - so that I focus in on a certain time range on a particular day? For example, say that I want to focus in on the evening of July 23, 2007. I would then be interested in:

July 23, 2007, 8pm
July 23, 2007, 8:15pm
July 23, 2007, 8:30pm
July 23, 2007, 8:45pm
July 23, 2007, 9:00pm
July 23, 2007, 9:15pm
July 23, 2007, 9:30pm
July 23, 2007, 9:45pm
July 23, 2007, 10:00pm
July 23, 2007, 10:15pm
July 23, 2007, 10:30pm
July 23, 2007, 10:45pm

Is this possible?

The reason I ask is because if I zoom to a particular location in Earth View and then switch to Sky View, and attempt to animate the visibility of the moon, I don't see the moon at the times I would expect it to be visible. And it seems like this may be the case because the time discretizations are too coarse to accommodate the times I am interested in.

Specifically, I am interested to see what the moon looks like after it is first born. This occurs sometime after sunset, but not long enough for the 4 hour time intervals to accommodate its view in Sky View.

Thanks,

Milad

Increasing the time resolution is possible, but it also increases the size of the file that you've gotta download (it also makes things a little tricky when you're trying to make the behavior of the Moon and the planets aesthetically pleasing when viewed together). The current configuration is the compromise we reached in trading off between those two goals: increased resolution and smallest download.

My time slider has always been set from July to Oct 20. Now it is Oct. 21. How do I get a range that goes past what I've been set on since I downloaded Google Sky? You mentioned a download? Is there someplace to do this? Kathy