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Photos: The best of Google Sky

A tour from the Big Dipper to the stunning Eagle Nebula...
By Gemma Simpson, Contributor
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1 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

A tour from the Big Dipper to the stunning Eagle Nebula...

The Google Sky application lets users navigate space in a similar way to Google Earth - with constellations drawn out and labelled to help cyber star gazers.

Pictured is the 'Big Dipper' or 'Plough' constellation - depending on what side of the Atlantic you're from.

Photo credit: Google Earth

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2 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

Users can also zoom in on particularly interesting spots - here is the centre of the Big Dipper up close.

silicon.com has gone through the Hubble slideshow and picked some of the best and weirdest sights in the (Google) Sky...

Photo credit: Google Earth

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3 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

Through a chance alignment, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a view of a face-on spiral galaxy lying precisely in front of another larger spiral.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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4 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

The Horsehead nebula (pictured) is one of the most photographed objects in the sky and is a cold, dark cloud of gas and dust.

The Horsehead is a rich breeding ground for new stars - the bright area at the top left edge of the image is a young star embedded in its nursery of gas and dust.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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5 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This is the Orion nebula - one of astronomy's most photogenic celestial objects and a hotbed of star formation.

More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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6 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

The Crab nebula is six light-years wide and the expanding remnant of a supernova - the structure resulting from the gigantic explosion of a star in a supernova.

This violent event was recorded nearly 1,000 years ago by Chinese and Japanese astronomers and the Crab gets its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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7 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This may look like a sunny-side-up egg - but it's actually a face-on shot from Hubble of a small spiral galaxy called NGC 7742.

This galaxy is thought to be powered by a black hole at its core.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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8 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This is the Egg Nebula - which gives astronomers a rare glimpse at the normally invisible dust shells surrounding an aging star.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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9 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This is a glowing loop of gas called the Ring Nebula.

First catalogued more than 200 years ago by French astronomer Charles Messier, the Hubble Space Telescope recently captured the sharpest view yet of the nebula.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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10 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This image from Hubble reveals a green and red nebula, dubbed the 'Ghost Head' for its eerie appearance.

The vibrant colours are produced by the light emitted by oxygen and hydrogen and help astronomers investigate the star-forming processes in such nebulas.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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11 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

Pictured is a violent and chaotic-looking mass of dust and gas, which is the remains of a massive star which has exploded - a celestial event known as a supernova.

It is estimated that the precursor of the explosion was a star, about 50 times larger than the sun.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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12 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

In this picture, a star 40 times bigger than the sun is blowing a giant bubble of material into space.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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13 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This is a rare view of the centre portion of a spiral 'edge-on' galaxy, similar to our Milky Way but lying some 55 million light-years from Earth.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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14 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

Eye spy… the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a giant celestial 'eye', known as planetary nebula NGC 6826.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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15 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

The 'cartwheel galaxy' shown here is formed from a head-on collision between two galaxies, located 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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16 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this object, nicknamed Gomez's Hamburger, which is a sun-like star nearing the end of its life.

The dark band is the shadow of a thick disk around the central star, which is seen edge-on from Earth.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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17 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

It may look like an extra-terrestrial monster but is actually an innocuous pillar of gas and dust, called the Cone Nebula.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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18 of 18 Gemma Simpson/ZDNET

This object is a tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula.

The tower is 9.5 light-years - or 57 trillion miles - high.

Photo credit: Google Earth, Nasa and Space Telescope Science Institute

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