In Sydney, it’s cold, miserable, and wet outside. Melbourne? Not much better. Perth is a little nicer, but if you’re sick of gazing at the dreary day on your lunch break, why not check out the sky beyond the clouds.

While it’s been around for a while, we accidentally stumbled onto Google Sky again today, a project created by Google that allows you to view the universe in the same way Google Maps works.

As Douglas Adams puts it in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’:

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Google Sky tries to make some sense of this, collaborating pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and pictures from all manner of telescopes around the world, painting a picture of the galaxy that is way more interesting than the raindrops that could be falling on your head outside.

Check out Google Sky