online interactive sky chart

I am still following the progress of Comet Holmes. If the sky is clear, I go outside with my binoculars at night and view the skies.

I also check the Sky & Telescope Web site for news regarding the comet and anything else that is newsworthy in the sky. Today, I discovered that the web site has an interactive sky chart that allows you to "create a custom naked-eye map of the whole sky for any place on Earth, at any time of day or night, on any date from 1600 to 2400." Their sky chart works in most Java-enabled Web browsers.

You have to register with Sky & Telescope in order to access the sky chart (registering is no big deal and its free). Once you register, you can access the chart and customize it for your location, which takes about one minute to do.

I do have Stellarium on my Mac, which provides the same functionality, but I can access Sky & Telescope's sky chart from any computer with a browser and that can come in handy when I don't have my Mac at ready.