Worldwide Telescope
Murali K,
May 13, 2008
Microsoft Research has launched a great product for researchers, novice and space enthusiasts, they call it as Worldwide Telescope, a Similar tool used by NASA to do space exploration on their desktops.
A seamless virtual environment similar to Google Earth or Google Sky but it has much data available and you have your Galileo Telescope in your desktop.
Microsoft Research claims the WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe.
WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data.
It is not real time, but they will be constantly updating the pictures, and they were taken in varying times in the past.
It is released a free resource to astronomy and education communities which is a Microsoft’s brainchild of 16 years research which is an extension of Jim Gray’s work.
It is quiet exciting for novice users like me to explore space.