St Joseph's Cathedral, Eritrea

St Joseph's Cathedral in Asmara, Eritrea, is a large Romanesque style cathedral in the centre of the city that was built when Eritrea was an Italian colony. It is the seat of the Ethiopian Catholic bishop of the eparchy of Asmara.

The Ethiopian Catholic Church is an autonomous particular church of the Roman Catholic Church. The building took six years to construct and was consecrated in 1922. Its tall Gothic tower is loosely based on that of the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, London.

View a video of St Joseph's Cathedral in Google Maps

Medusa Map

I've added a video of the Medusa Galaxy to the Star Viewer Map. To view the video click the link at the bottom of the page.

Due to the imminent demise of Google Pages I've also had to change the home page of the Star Viewer Map. It will still work on the previous Google Pages link for a few more days.

However, if you have the Star Viewer Map bookmarked, you will need to change the url to:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/keir.clarke/star/sky.htm

Wimbledon Twitter Map

Using some code made freely available by www.mapchannels.com I've created a Wimbledon Twitter Map. The page shows all the latest Tweets about Wimbledon. It is also possible to click on a number of player names to see the latest Tweets about your favourite tennis players.

The map itself doesn't actually serve much purpose but you can search for different locations to see what people are saying about Wimbledon (or the players) at different locations around the world.

Pinwheel Galaxy

I've added a video of the Pinwheel Galaxy to the Sky Viewer Map.

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy about 27 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Mechain on March 27, 1781, and he subsequently communicated his discovery to Charles Messier who verified its position and added it to the Messier Catalogue as one of the final entries.

The video comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Hidden Universe series.

Putuo Zongcheng Temple

The Putuo Zongcheng Temple of Chengde, Hebei province, China is a Qing Dynasty era Buddhist temple complex built between 1767 and 1771, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1735-1796). It is located near the Chengde Mountain Resort, which is south of the Putuo Zongcheng.

Along with the equally famed Puning Temple, it is one of the Eight Outer Temples of Chengde. The temple was modeled after the Potala Palace of Tibet, the old sanctuary of the Dalai Lama built a century earlier

View a video of the Putuo Zongcheng Temple on Google Maps

Ming Dynasty Tombs

The Ming Dynasty Tombs are located some 50 kilometres due North of Beijing at a specially selected site. The site was chosen by the third Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle (1402 - 1424), who moved the capital of China from Nanjing to the present location of northwest Beijing. The Ming tombs of the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty were located on the southern slope of Mount Taishou.

The site of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Tombs was carefully chosen according to Feng Shui principles. According to these, bad spirits and evil winds descending from the North must be deflected; therefore, an arc-shaped area at the foot of the Jundu Mountains north of Beijing was selected.

View a video of the Ming Dynasty Tombs on Google Maps

Photosynth Map

There has been a lot of press lately about websites using Microsoft's Photosynth and Virtual Earth together. The Photosynth player can also be embedded in a Google Map.

This example is a proof of concept. I haven't added many examples and I haven't really thought about the design of the page yet. However it does show the potential of embedding Photosynth in Google Maps.

View Photosynth in Google Maps