Google launched a new service called Sky that lets you explore the heavens from within Google Earth. You get a 3D view of all the constellations viewable from earth, and you can explore them in 3D.

Over 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies are included, and you can switch on animated layers to see the planets traveling across the sky and show the constellations.

Amazingly, the imagery is stitched together from more than 1 million images, with contributions from the Hubble Space Telescope. That shouldn’t be surprising, since Google and NASA have already worked together on images that show the earth from space.

Note: You need to download the latest version (4.2) of GoogleEarthin order to enjoy this new feature.

Oh, and for those interested, GoogleEarth is now also available in Dutch…

To activate, click on the little globe-icon on top of the menu-bar or select “View | Switch to Sky”…