I don�t know anything of astronomy (maybe I�ll learn a lot with this new "Sky" feature ), but I want to know something:

Look at this picture about the relative position between the Moon and Saturn on August 18, 2007 (4 days ago). You can see from the top zoom out that the Moon ( Mercury, sorry...) is overlaying Saturn: (well, here�s a bug as the Mercury�s behind Saturn... )


But when you zoom in you see this (in the same day, same hour):


Then, if you zoom in more you get this:


So, here is my question:
Is the maximun zoom out the real, plain human view from the Earth? I mean without any optical instrument but our own eyes?

Hello Gerardo,

Viewing the Sky view is just like viewing the Earth view but you're inside a virtual sphere, zooming in towards the images stuck on the inside of it (just like the aerial images are stuck on the outside of the sphere in the Earth view). The images appear to get bigger and smaller - as you'd expect - but the planets appear to be more like icons, which - as the normal Earth view - don't change size as you zoom in and out (unless you zoom out far enough, just like with the Earth view).

As for Mercury showing behind Saturn, I guess they've got the order of the layers the wrong way around.

An interesting observation - still it's a great new feature.

Quote:

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Is the maximun zoom out the real, plain human view from the Earth? I mean without any optical instrument but our own eyes

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I can't see how this could be as the you can 'zoom out' (or is that zoom in!) so see about a third of the way around the sphere (try turning on the grid to see what I mean).



Simon.

If you want an interesting view of Sky - turn on the G-Force mode (CTRL-G) and it will flip you to an outside the sphere of the Sky view. You can then go back to normal mode (CTRL-T) to see things from the outside. Kind of a "feature". :-) To fix things, just return to normal Earth view and go back to Sky view.

Frank

Hi Simon

As I said...I don�t know anything about astronomy...

So Amstrong didn�t go to Mercury?...

Sorry...and thanks!

LOL!

Nice one...



Simon.

I didn't want to embarass you...

(It certainly would have been one giant leap!)

Simon.