Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images?
Or do you want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth?
How about taking a 5 minute break and viewing a panorama of a different city?
The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) was designed to be a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope-bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.
Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. Join Harvard Astronomer Alyssa Goodman on a journey showing how dust in the Milky Way Galaxy condenses into stars and planets. Take a tour with University of Chicago Cosmologist Mike Gladders two billion years into the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light from galaxies allowing you to see billions more years into the past.
WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft high performance Visual Experience Engine and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago.
Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.
WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.
Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.
Requirements:
· PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
· 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
· 3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
· 1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
· XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
· Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing and scrolling device
· Microsoft DirectX version 9.0c or later and .NET Framework 2.0 or later
· Required for some features; Internet connection at 56 Kbps or higher through either an Internet service provider (ISP) or a network. Internet access might require a separate fee to an ISP; local or long-distance telephone charges might also apply
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· New releases of both the Windows and web Client are now available with many new features and bug fixes. The Windows Client has photo-realistic rendering of the Earth and Sun, as well as shadows of Jupiter's moons. The new Cosmos rendering incorporates the most advanced view of the universe outside of our Galaxy ever available. Both versions include new features for professional astronomers, including displaying FITS images and Virtual Observatory queries.
