Google proudly announced the open sourcing of its Google Sky map (window on the sky) delighting many star gazers!

Launched in May 2009, the app was developed by Google developers at Pittsburgh.  The big announcement came along with the shutting down of several other Google services like Picnik, Urchin, Needlebase, Google Message Continuity and the Social Graph API.

The Google Research Blog said “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.”

Google Sky Map displays the sky map of the area the device faces, using the Android phone’s compass, GPS and clock. The app is Android only for the moment!