Google has released a really innovative new feature called Sky. It’s a brilliant “inside-out” repurposing of the spherical-modeling technology they’ve already developed for Google Earth. Watch Frank Taylor’s (Google Earth Blog) video to see how it works:

As a casual astronomy buff, I love this. I tend to just “wander” around the sky when I’m out with my binoculars or telescope. With Google Earth “Sky”, I look forward to getting more than just a name to go with whatever I’ve spotted. Integrating the images right onto the sky map ought to enhance the experience nicely for casual users like me.

Thanks to gCaptain for the tip.

So, you’re underway at night, and you see a complicated arrangement of lights ahead. “Hmmm, must be something commercial. What the heck is it? I hope we can just go around it…” Well, if you’d been studying your Weems & Plath Lightrule, you might realize that it’s a trawler pulling nets that you need to watch out for. (more…)

Time to add some more websites we enjoy to our blogroll. Let me tell you a little bit about them.

Tugster: a waterblog

Besides the practical and safety-related uses of AIS, I think a big part of the fun is ship-spotting. And if you enjoy ship-spotting, you’ll like Tugster. He regularly posts interesting photos of ships and working boats in New York Harbor, along with comments in his succinct and enjoyable style. Reading him feels like hanging around a harbor with an old friend who knows something about everything that’s going on.

Craft A Craft

Bruce recently left us a nice comment and posted about Navagear on his boat-building blog Craft A Craft. My parents built a couple boats when I was a kid, and we’ve had some boat-building friends over the years, so I have a soft-spot for those who take on the challenge of building their own boats. It takes a lot of patience and persistence, as well as curiosity and smarts to pull it all together. You can follow along on Bruce’s blog while he begins his boat-building saga.

gCaptain

gCaptain is a website focused on news and interest for professional mariners, and we like their blog, which has all kinds of nuggests that are interesting to cruisers, and anyone curious about what’s going on in the world of shipping and commercial craft.

Boat Bits

Bob from Boat Bits is a sailor and film maker and has been writing about the gear he has had good and not-so-good experience with, as well as interesting opinions on boat design and building. We think it’s always good to hear unvarnished perspectives. And, apparently he’s working some interesting sounding boating-related DVDs…

Recent discussions here and over at Panbo have revealed some confusion about how at least one of the tender tracking systems (Rendez-vous) use AIS to display the tenders on a chartplotter.

When one hears “tender tracking using AIS”, one can be forgiven for assuming that the tenders will have AIS transponders installed. Obviously, that’s one way to track tenders; looking at current prices for the currently available tender tracking systems, AIS might even be cheaper! I’m kidding, of course: please don’t install AIS on your jet ski.

No, that’s not what Rendez-vous does. Instead, (more…)

With Dean making headlines, I started hunting for online hurricane information. One of my first stops, gCaptain, has a valuable collection of links. Be sure to read the comments…lots of good feedback from readers.

Did you know you can use a pencil lead and electrical leads connected to a 12 volt battery to make a pretty bright, albeit short-lived source of light? Yeah, me neither. I’m not even sure I can think of a scenario where I would actually need to do something like this, but heck, maybe some dark and stormy night…


Turn A PENCIL Into A LIGHT ! - video powered by Metacafe

Nobeltec is the big daddy of computer-based navigation software, and all the more so now that they’re owned by Jeppesen Marine, a Boeing subsidiary. They’ve been an important innovator in the field, and continue to bring interesting new capabilities to their product line, although at prices that would make some cruisers cringe.

Recently I saw a press release on the Tender Tracker, a $1,500 addin for the Nobeltec Admiral navigation suite. This price does not include the hardware that makes it work, an interesting bit of technology from Seetrac. Basically it’s a proprietary AIS-like technology, so that a tender or jet ski carrying the Seetrac transmitter sends position and other navigation data back to the mother ship. This would, for instance, allow a yacht captain to keep track of a his guests as they explore. Another possibility is sending out a tender with a depth sounder that electronically reports back its data to the mother ship’s navigation software. (more…)

In case you’d like to keep up on Navagear on your smartphone or PDA, we’ve added a better view for these types of devices. So far I’ve only tested with a T-Mobile Dash, and it makes the site much more readable. Let us know if how it works for you.

When I was a kid, my friends and I watched re-runs of Gilligan’s Island after school. There was one episode that was always our favorite. We loved the one where the Japanese sailor (who doesn’t realize the war is over, of course) arrives in our castaways’ lagoon aboard his tiny submarine. Oh, how we longed for a tiny submarine of our own. Deep down inside, I still long for one.

So it’s no exaggeration to say (more…)

Take a moment to get out tonight and, if possible, set up a reclining chair of some sort. Orient yourself so you can see the sky to the northeast. Then just watch.

The astronomy enthusiasts over at Cloudy Nights publish articles about astronomical highlights for the current month. The August article mentions the Perseid Meteor Shower, “which peaks (up to 100 meteors/hr) on the night of the 12th and 13th of August, the night of the New Moon. In the absence of lunar glare, conditions should be perfect. Numerous bright, fast meteors will appear to shoot out of the northeast by 11 PM EDT and meteor count will build to a 4 AM EDT peak.”