Love staring at the sky and wishing upon shooting stars? Now you can easily do that, even when the weather is growling at you. Friday Slooh and Google said that live space exploration has arrived to Google Earth by way of a new “map the universe” layer. The new feature integrates Slooh’s Space Camera technology and its worldwide network of robotic mountaintop telescopes, allowing Google Earth users to explore outer space in real-time and take part of mapping the universe.

“We’re thrilled to announce this integration with Google Earth, which fulfills our mission to promote scientific enlightenment and reconnect people with the natural world around them,” said Michael Paolucci, Founder of Slooh. “Sharing the view through a live telescope is a powerful experience, one we are pleased to now share with Google’s worldwide audience.”

Slooh is an online Space Camera that streams live views from robotic telescopes mounted in the Canary Islands, Chile and Australia. The drawback to its Google Earth integration is that users will need a membership to actually manipulate the cameras–those without a membership will only be allowed to view images captured by the Space Camera. Currently more than 35,000 unique images have already been injected into the new Google Earth layer.

According to Slooh, Google Earth will also play host to Slooh’s live astronomy missions, offering live feeds of celestial events (like lunar eclipses, alien invasions, etc) with an enhanced audio narration by Bob Berman and an additional Slooh host.

“Since 2004, Slooh has provided live coverage of many important celestial events, including eclipses, transits, comets, and supernova discoveries, including its October 2009 coverage of NASA’s LCROSS crash of a space ship into the Moon,” the company said in a statement.

Budding astronomers can sign up for a membership. A monthly membership costs $5.95 USD–$29.95 for six months and $49.95 for twelve months. Well, at least that’s considered cheap, for being an e-Astronaut.

SOURCE via Slooh