next generation of Sky in Google Earth

[Alasdair Allan]

Jonathan Fay wrote:
> While KML is a common denominator, unfortunately astronomy has not  
> been at the table at all for its definition so far. It needs to be  
> a priority to move KML to use astronomy friendly standards.
>
> Certainly it needs to move away from equirectangualar projections  
> for full sky and overlays to more astronomy friendly projections.
>
> Also astronomy coordinates systems and meta data need to be  
> supported so that KML can be used to support rich astronomy use,  
> rather than just HTML or text.
>
> I think this will take the VO community, Microsoft Research and the  
> Google Sky folks to push this together, otherwise the critical mass  
> will come from the Earth based GIS folks and astronomy will  
> continue to be short-changed.

Agreed. But KML is now deeply entrenched in the GIS community despite  
the awful geo-rectification problems  (handy when you're wife is a  
geographer). I think we have to work within the existing framework,  
large scale changes to KML as is aren't going to happen. Extensions,  
sure, changes, no.

Al.