While you’re up tonight waiting for The Ball to drop take a look up at the sky and observe the stars and planets. If you’re like me, you can probably recognize the Bigger Dipper and not much more. For folks like me Google has an Android App to help us figure out what we’re looking at when we stare into the night sky.

Google Sky is a free Android app for your phone or tablet. Using the app you can point find out what star, constellation, or planet you’re looking at any moment.  In the automatic mode, the Google Sky app uses GPS data, compass data, date, and time to determine where you are and what you’re looking at. In the manual mode you can explore the night sky almost as is you were using Google Earth to find a place on Earth.

The video below offers a nice introduction to the Google Sky Android app.

The Google Sky Android app could be a great app for students to use at home with their parents for an informal astronomy lesson.