A young man nervously leads his girlfriend into a field in the dark of night. “Can you name any of the stars?” he asks. She doesn’t know much beyond Orion’s Belt. He whips out his smartphone and lifts it in the air—a map instantly shows them, by name, all the stars, planets, and constellations above. Suddenly, her name pops up above a heavenly body. He exclaims, “I named that star after you!” It’s possible because Google has now partnered with Carnegie Mellon to make an even better map of the sky through Sky Map.
Molly McCurdy (A’10)