The Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington is pioneering public access to space imagery from the best ground- and space-based observatories around the Earth...and off-planet.
Called the WorldWide Telescope, the powerful software tool opens wide the Universe at large for all to see.
The application itself -- in beta test form -- is a blend of software and web service created with the Microsoft high-performance Visual Experience Engine. WorldWide Telescope permits seamless panning and zooming around the heavens and stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies and displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky.
Users can freely browse through the solar system, galaxy and beyond, or take advantage of a growing number of guided tours of the sky hosted by astronomers and educators at major universities and planetariums.
Microsoft Research is releasing WorldWide Telescope as a service -- free of charge -- with the hope that it will "inspire and empower kids of all ages to explore and understand the universe in an unprecedented way," according to a Microsoft press statement.
WorldWide Telescope is now available at:
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org
-- Leonard David
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