We are all stargazers. Anyone who has ever looked up at the sky at night has been fascinated by the beauty of the cosmos. Some go on to transfer that fascination into a passion for astronomy, either as an avocation or a profession. Astronomers have developed powerful tools to peer deeper than ever into the vast distances of the universe. These have been networked to provide the scientific community with the latest discoveries from telescopes around the planet, even in orbit. Now, the images they have recorded are available for stargazing on your personal computer.
A team from Microsoft Research has launched a portal, still in beta, on the Internet called the WorldWide Telescope (WWT), where amateurs and professionals alike can take part in a social networking environment dedicated to exploring the heavens virtually.
Users of the WWT (Windows only) can take guided tours of the universe led by professionals from some of the most advanced observatories in the world. Contributors can add multimedia slideshows to the WWT in much the same way they create PowerPoint presentations.
The technology used to build the WWT is based on Microsoft's Visual Experience Engine, which lets users pan and zoom through images. The company says that the WWT blends terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Web into an immersive experience.
"Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago," said Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in yesterday's announcement. "I believe this new creation from Microsoft will have a profound impact on the way we view the universe."
The Microsoft Research team believes the WWT should serve as a model educational resource for students, fostering a lifelong interest in astronomy and science in general.
"Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe," Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates noted.
Microsoft Research is dedicating the WWT project to the memory of Jim Gray, a former IBM and Microsoft computer scientist who won the prestigious Turing Award in 1988 for his work in database and transaction processing. He was a team leader on Microsoft's Virtual Earth platform, which enables users to create geospatial mapping applications. A boat Gray was sailing disappeared at sea 12 months ago and has never been found.
Microsoft said it is releasing the WWT freely to the science and education communities as a tribute to Gray with the hope that it will inspire and empower kids of all ages to explore and understand the universe in an unprecedented way.
