When Google Earth initially debuted I viewed it as a nifty toy of sorts, in a “Cool, I can see my house from here!” sort of way. Like many, I’d played around with the program in its infancy and had some fun peeking at famous sites from a bird’s eye view, but got bored with it shortly thereafter and discarded it. Recently though, I revisited the software after hearing the buzz about some neat available add-ons, and it’s now painfully obvious to me that I’d vastly underestimated its potential.

Not only has the program been nicely refined since its inception, but a number of really cool utilities have been created since then, causing chronic geeks like myself to spend inordinate amounts of time exploring pet interests within a three-dimensional framework as opposed to boring 2D maps.

The first of these to catch my eye was a real-time map of earthquakes provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s much more fun to surf around the globe viewing the latest seismic events in Google Earth than the old-fashioned way. In addition to displaying recorded temblors, you’re also able to view tectonic plate boundaries and convergence zones, faults, rifts, subduction zones — for minor geology fans like myself, it’s dynamite.

Next, I discovered that the National Weather Service offers interactive radar maps for use on GE, found a nifty global cloud map, as well as real-time satellite imagery for the continental United States. Marvelous stuff.

Lastly, I peeked around to see if anything was available for astronomical observing. I was hoping to score a map of projected seeing conditions, but wasn’t able to find one. I did, however, discover the next best thing.

I may be the last amateur observer with Internet access to stumble across this, but nonetheless had a revelation when I realized that it was possible to superimpose light pollution maps as overlays in Google Earth. Based on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (more here), these graphical representations offer a very handy, interactive means of finding a decently dark location to set up your ’scope.

[Reminder: you must have Google Earth installed on your machine in order to complete the tasks below.]

If you just want to peruse conditions in your immediate locale, start by finding the location closest to yours from this list of Clear Sky Clocks (a fantastic resource I might add, many thanks to Attila Danko for his labor). Once you’ve found the clock closest to your doorstep, click on Light Pollution Map in the “Nifty Links” table. From that page, you should see a URL titled Get this map as a Google Earth image overlay. Unfortunately, that feature doesn’t work for Firefox users, but it loads right up using Internet Explorer.

If you’d prefer loading complete maps of light pollution for North America and/or Europe (and these do work for Firefox and Internet Explorer users), just click on the URLs below:

• North American light pollution map
• European light pollution map

If you’re unfamiliar with the color representations, consult the legend from this page I’d posted earlier to see which locations are afforded optimal conditions. The areas where you can see the actual terrain in GE are the best possible places to set up. It’s a shame that they’re often out of reach for many living near urban areas, but regardless I wanted to pass this clever resource along.

If you’d like to help combat the spread of light pollution, support the International Dark Sky Association.