Hacking the Sky

In this article I present some special astronomical scripts created for Google Earth, Google Sky and Twitter. These ‘hacks’ are examples of the ways in which such tools can be used either alone, in on conjunction with online services. The result of a combination of multiple, online services to form a new facility is called a mash-up. Some of what follows falls into that definition. As we move into an era of online data and tools, it is the network as a whole that becomes important. Tools emerging from this network can be capable of more than the sum of their parts.