Google reaches for the stars with update to mobile Earth app
While the web version of both Google Earth and Earth Pro have allowed users to see the stars up in the night sky, the mobile version of the Earth app did not have this feature. That is, until now. Because smartphones have become more powerful, Google is able to show the stars on most handsets when the user zooms out of Earth. Last week, Google pointed out that it used to show the area around Earth as being black which it admits “wasn’t very realistic.”
With the changes made by Google, “Rotate the globe and you’ll see images of the beautiful Milky Way, collected from the European Southern Observatory, depicting the stars as they’d appear to a space explorer at a point some 30,000 miles above the planet.” In addition, Google added animated clouds that reflect global weather patterns and information about space can be found on the app’s Voyager guided tour.
As Google noted in the blog announcing the new features for the mobile version of the app, “All kinds of people use Google Earth: scientists, environmentalists, government and nonprofit workers, and global citizens who simply love exploring the planet. Whether they want to zoom in and explore Earth close-up or zoom out and see the big picture, we hope people using the Google Earth app will enjoy this new opportunity to stargaze.”