This wonderful web app really misses planetarium features. I want to watch the simulated sky as it would be seen from my backyard. Planets, the moon and the sun are missing parts. I love to see the live picture of (at least) the sun in my planetarium software, instead of a yellow disk.
The zoom function needs to display the current FOV.
I enjoyed the Windows Vista gadget, but both the web app and the gadget needs some browser caching, something like what Google Earth does. It seems the current version re-loads the tiles while scrolling out and back to them. At least the tiles around the current field of view need to be cached.
Very nice API, but is it possible to add a method that returns if a part of the sky has SDSS images or not.
And a leap forward: Will you provide 3D view of the universe? I remember some people were working on a web based 3D view of HIP catalog using Microsoft WPF technologies, and wonder if they are related to you.
Thanks for the great job.