Mashing Up Maps of the Heavens

It's been a while since we've found a good Google map mash-up that we like. But in our unwavering passion for cartography and the recent upturn in our interest in looking skyward (well, the last two days – not this morning all full of rain) we are taking a look at two extra terrestrial mapping services. One actually maps the unidentified extra terrestrials as they've been spotted from the Earth, the other maps those hunks of junk we've purposefully sent into space to orbit the earth.

Taking the information contained in individual sighting reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (yes, it does exist) points are plotted on the Google map interface. Cute little spaceship cartoons tell you where the latest one has been spotted – click on it and it'll pull up a bubble with more information and a link to the full report. The folks at Poly9 have also made the interface available with MSN Virtual Earth and Google Earth.

The Satellite Tracking mash-up is the first one we've seen in a while with real time data changing the graphics continuously. It's tough because you can't trace the route from your current location to the Hubble Space Telescope, but, wait, why would you want to. Lots of cool, geeky information on dozens of satellites is available on the sidebar displays. Perhaps we should tell the folks at the UFO Reporting Center that they should cross reference their reports with what they can find on the Satellite Tracking map. Well, that is before the troops show up at our door wondering why we're blogging about the location of their sattelites.