Open-sourcing Sky Map and collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University

"In May 2009 we launched Google Sky Map: our “window on the sky” for Android phones. Created by half a dozen Googlers at the Pittsburgh office in our 20% time, the app was designed to show off the amazing capabilities of the sensors in the first generation Android phones. Mostly, however, we wrote it because we love astronomy....Today, we are delighted to announce that we are going to share Sky Map in a different way: we are donating Sky Map to the community. We are collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University in an exciting partnership that will see further development of Sky Map as a series of student projects. Sky Map’s development will now be driven by the students, with Google engineers remaining closely involved as advisors. Additionally, we have open-sourced the app so that other astronomy enthusiasts can take the code and augment it as they wish...."