Google has released today the flip-side of their popular satellite driven application Google earth. Instead of zooming from space to the planet earth, you can now zoom from the earth to the sky - or rather the starts to be more exact.

This update, isn’t really being called “Google Sky” instead, it’s just an update to the Google Earth - version 4.2

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

Viewing the sky is just as easy as clicking “Sky” and Google Earth will display the stars as shown directly above the position that you were viewing of the earth. The sky functionality even goes so far as to include the ability to view as seen from the hubble telescope and to give you further detailed information about what you’re viewing. This sounds like an astronomer’s or even a teacher’s new favorite tool.

Check it out, at the main Google Earth website.