Afraid you're going to miss today's lunar eclipse? Google has a solution for you.
Google announced Wednesday that it's working with Slooh Space Camera to live stream today's lunar eclipse, which is only visible to people in Europe, Africa, Central Asia and Australia. Slooh Space Camera is an online astronomy platform with a robotic telescope service
"We're always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world -- what can we say, it's the geek in us!" wrote Noel Gorelick, Google's technical lead in Special Projects, in a blog post. "Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn't be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year's eclipse."
Figuring that others would be disappointed as well, Gorelick said Google decided to live stream the event around the world.
Google will stream the lunar event live today from 2 to 6 p.m. EDT. Users will be able to watch the eclipse via several different channels, such as YouTube, Google Earth and an Android app .
Google also will have astronomers giving live narrations of the event.
Today's lunar eclipse is the first of two expected this year. The second one is predicted for Dec. 10.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
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