Hey guys can anyone explain me why VY canis majoris is not available on google sky?

Question

I couldn't find VY canis majoris on google sky. Can anybody help me?

Answer 1

There are much better star maps than Google Sky. It's a thing for the masses, not for astronomers.

Here is how to find VW Canis Majoris. It's actually on Google Sky but not labeled, and if you zoom up to the area shown in the link you'll see it....if you can find out which one it is from all the others around it.

The VW bit is a particular way of classifying and naming stars. Capital letters like that means it's a variable star, (not a spaceman's Volkswagon, haha...or whatever)

It is very _very_ faint and if you don't do astronomy you'll probably have a lot of trouble actually identifying the right star amongst all the others using your big powerful binoculars or a telescope.

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20100402032750AA2GAsz . . . . . .

Answer 2

The designation "VY" indicates that VY Canis Majoris is a variable star. Google Sky is not a real star atlas and doesn't label variable stars as such, though the stars are actually there (though not labelled).



[Edit] Using a chart from the AAVSO web site, I located VY Canis Majoris in Google Sky:

http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-25.767122033097507&longitude=-69.25712585449219&zoom=11&Spitzer=0.00&ChandraXO=0.00&Galex=0.00&IRAS=0.00&WMAP=0.00&Cassini=0.00&slide=1&mI=-1&oI=-1

It's the bright star in the middle of this field.

Answer 3

Because google sky is crap. Try http://www.sky-map.org or http://www.wikisky.org



There's also http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov and many other websites that provide accurate and reliable views of space.



P.S. google sky is realy crap, it doesn't show the right place even if you enter the exact coordinates for VY Canis Majoris: 07 22 58.33, -25 46 03.17

Answer 4

I noticed that too, it's not on Celestia either which is a popular planetarium program. I guess that, even though it's the biggest star we know about, it's not really that well known. Maybe it's too far from Earth to be easily visible or it's behind a dust cloud or something, like the Pistol Star.