After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth , the Internet search giant is now hoping to turn many of them into virtual stargazers.
当谷歌通过谷歌地球（Google Earth）把数以百万互联网用户带入虚拟世界来探险我们这个星球之后,互联网搜索巨头正力图把更多人变成虚拟的星空猎手.
Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to view the skies as seen from Earth . Like Google Earth, Sky will let users fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.
谷歌今天揭开了Google Earth的一项新的服务得面纱名为天空（Sky）,它将允许用户象使用Google Earth一样来遨游或随意缩放,用户从而可以探索来自于有100万颗星和200万个星系得细节
"You will be able to browse into the sky like never before," said Carol Christian, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute, a nonprofit academic consortium that supports the Hubble Space Telescope.
"你将能够浏览到从未看到过的星空"天文学家卡罗尔*克里斯通说,他所供职的天文与空间望远镜科学研究所是一个非赢利的学术财团，该机构也支持哈勃太空望远镜.
While other programs allow users to explore the skies, they typically combine a mix of representations of stars and galaxies that are overlaid with photographs, Ms. Christian said. "These are really the images of the sky. Everything is real."
当然也有其他一些类似研究项目让用户探索星空,他们一般只是将各类恒星和星系图片的照片加以整合,克里斯通女士说. "这些都是直观的星空影像.一切事物是真实的. "
The Sky imagery was stitched together from more than one million photographs from scientific and academic sources, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology and the NASA -financed Hubble.
这些星空影像都是从科技和学术角度出发组合的，缝合在一起超过100万的照片,来源于各种研究结构，包括the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology and the NASA -financed Hubble.
Google said that it developed the project strictly because some of its engineers were interested in it, and that it had no plans to make money from it for now.
谷歌说,它之所以进入这一项目的研究,是因为它的一些工程师对此很感兴趣,同时它表示, 从现在开始他们没有以此盈利的想法。
"It's merely about getting new kinds of information out there for the public," said Chikai Ohazama, a Google Earth project manager.
谷歌地球的一位项目经理智凯奥则玛说：“这只是对公众提供获得另类信息的渠道”.
As with Google Earth, individual users and organizations will be able to overlay photographs, annotations and other kinds of data on top of Sky's basic images and make them available to others as layers -- called mash-ups.
像谷歌地球一样,各类个人用户和组织将能够上传照片、说明和其他各种数据,以及星空的基本图像,并把它们提供给更多的用户共享，来作为底图—叫做mash-ups.
Sky already has layers showing various constellations, a user's guide to galaxies, the position of planets two months into the future and animations of lunar positions.
星空软件可以为我们展示由所有星座组成的星空世界,用户导引进入星系,我们还可以通过模拟动画认识两个月以后行星的位置和相应得月相.
A "backyard astronomy" layer highlights stars, galaxies and nebulae that are visible to the naked eye, with binoculars or with small telescopes.
"后院天文学"可以展示高亮度的恒星,以及星系和星云,这些我们或是用肉眼,用双筒望远镜或小型望远镜可以看到的.
"I think it will certainly be a great educational venue," said S. George Djorgovski, a Caltech astronomy professor.
"As the Google Earth example has shown, people are extremely ingenious in coming up with mash-ups and inventing other uses for it."
加理工学院天文学教授乔治迪杰说： "我想这一定会成为一个伟大的教育活动场所，作为地球谷歌例子已经表明,人们都很灵巧,他们在开发创造新的成品及开发软件的其他用途. "
Professor Djorgovski has developed a mash-up depicting events like cosmic explosions. "This was a simple way to convey there is a dynamic aspect to the universe," he said.
迪杰教授描述的以后研究探索会类似宇宙大爆炸层出不穷. "这是一个通过简单途径来传达宇宙有活力的一面 "他说.
Microsoft has a research project called the World Wide Telescope that offers similar capabilities to Sky. The project was once headed by Jim Gray, the veteran Microsoft researcher who disappeared this year after a sailing trip off San Francisco Bay.
微软的曾经有一个研究项目叫做（WWT）,旨在把世界各地的望远镜联合起来，共同探寻星空，该项目以吉米格雷为首,这位微软资深研究员,在今年访问过旧金山湾就消失了踪迹.
To get Sky, users will have to download the latest version of Google Earth.
如果想得到天空软件,用户只要下载最新版谷歌地球即可.
