DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Like Star Gazing? Explore the Cosmos from Your Computer!

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope will light your fuse

By Edward C. Baig

Microsoft wants you to boldly go where you have never gone before — right from your PC desktop. The vehicle is the WorldWide Telescope, a breathtaking educational resource that turns your Windows computer into a virtual observatory of space.

The free application combines downloadable software and Web 2.0 smarts. It seamlessly weaves together 12 terabytes of data and gorgeous imagery from the world's finest telescopes — the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, Spitzer Space Telescope and more. You're left with a remarkable window into space.

We've all seen pretty pictures of the planets and the stars. But WorldWide Telescope gives you proportion and perspective. You come to grasp the relative size, scale and sheer vastness of celestial outposts as you rocket, say, from Mercury to Uranus. You can also peer at our own planet using imagery from Microsoft's Virtual Earth program. It's all very addictive.

You can explore space on your own terms, using the mouse and/or keyboard to fluidly zoom in and pan the nighttime sky. Or let expert astronomers and scientists take you on excellent interactive narrated tours.

You'll need a robust computer with Windows Vista or XP to explore the cosmos this way. Google Sky, a roughly similar offering, works with Macs. But Microsoft does a superior job of making you feel like you're catching a cab through the universe.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Washington | Web | New Jersey | Toronto | Rio de Janeiro | Redmond | Riyadh | Hubble Space Telescope | Saturn | Mercury | Windows Vista | PowerPoint | Milky Way | Macs | Wikipedia | Neptune | Benjamin | Spitzer Space Telescope | Ring | Uranus | Sloan Digital Sky Survey | Big Dipper | Virtual Earth | WorldWide Telescope | If Microsoft

I'm tempted to ask: If Microsoft can send you to the moon, why can't it fix Vista?

All kidding aside, WorldWide Telescope makes stunning use of technology, what Microsoft calls the Visual Experience Engine. Still, the interface is a little daunting, and I sometimes got lost in space.

Plus, in my tests I had a close encounter with a baffling software message: "Unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application." The Microsoft equivalent, I suppose, of a black hole.

But Microsoft's mission is indeed worth lauding as an entertaining tool to teach astronomy to kids of all ages. It's thrilling as you zoom toward Saturn or Neptune to see these planets suddenly emerge into your field of vision out of the vast emptiness of space.

A closer look at my exploration of space:

•Taking off. You download software at www.worldwidetelescope.org to begin your expedition. (Google Sky requires only a browser.) The guided tours — for example, Center of the Milky Way, Dust and Us — are generally a great place to start. They can take a long time to download, and just some of them have voiceovers.

Microsoft is encouraging folks to create their own tours to share with others, which is a little like preparing slides in PowerPoint. That was beyond the expertise of this astronomy neophyte; my stargazing prowess is generally limited to finding the Big Dipper. Then again, one of the most refreshing tours was posted by a 6-year-old Toronto boy named Benjamin who weighed in on the Ring nebula. Sample: "I read that it's 2,300 light years away, which seems like a very long bike ride."

•Delving deeper. You can pause a tour in the middle to explore that portion of the galaxy in greater detail, then resume where you left off. Through something called a FinderScope, you can get a sense of your position in the sky and summon a menu with links to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia and other research links.

As you zoom in on stars, supernovas and the like, clickable thumbnail images may appear at the bottom of the screen, revealing other objects and areas worth exploring in your neighborhood of space. Some thumbnails lead to other guided tours. Through the program's settings, you can also change your virtual observation point, as if you were gazing at the sky from Rio de Janeiro, Riyadh or Microsoft's home campus in Redmond, Wash. The program also found coordinates for my small New Jersey town.

Indeed, you're presented lots of options on how to view the heavens, and it can all get a little confusing. My best advice to other beginners is to experiment with all of them. You can view imagery through multiple wavelengths to experience things that would otherwise be invisible: microwaves, so-called SFD dust maps (infrared), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (an ambitious attempt to map the universe) and more.

You can use your own telescope in tandem with WorldWide Telescope to track what you are gazing at. You'll have to install a software platform called ASCOM (Astronomy Common Object Model) and a driver for the telescope.

One really neat feature is the ability to change your observation time to a date and time in the future or one in the past, which is useful, for example, for looking at an eclipse in the past.

Speaking of the past, Microsoft's ads used to ask: "Where Do You Want To Go Today?" A decade later, we have a really good answer: straight to outer space.

E-mail: ebaig@usatoday.com
Share this story:

Website: http://worldwidetelescope.org

Score: 3½ stars (out of four)

Pro: Awesome resource lets you pan, zoom and explore outer space from your PC, leaning on vast amounts of data and stunning imagery from the world's finest telescopes. Guided expert tours. And it's all free.

Con: The program, like space itself, can be daunting, especially for astronomy beginners.

ACCESS TO TELESCOPES THE 'HOLY GRAIL OF ASTRONOMERS'

With Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope you can examine the universe in visible light (what we can normally see) or switch to X-ray and other views. That's important. Most of the action in the universe can only be seen in these other wavelengths of light, including black holes, says researcher Roy Gould at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Having "the world's greatest telescopes at your disposal has been the holy grail of astronomers," says Gould, who helped Microsoft demo WorldWide Telescope at the prestigious TED conference in February. "There's been talk for years of a national virtual observatory and this is an example of what that would be like."

Google launched a similar project called Google Sky last summer, but it doesn't appear space will emerge as a major battleground for the two. Neither is a commercial venture, though Wong says some underlying technology can be applied to other businesses.

For its part, Google e-mailed a response: "We always welcome additional tools that help put people in touch with information about the universe around them and advance scientific research."

The sky is apparently the limit.

I've downloaded the Worldwide Telescope and started playing with it. Pretty darn cool. Of course if you have access to your own high-powered telescope, it might be passe.

sounds neat, ill have to give it try some time. Ever since google earth cam around ive been hoping they made a google galaxy, and they did, kind of (google sky).

Also stellarium is a really cool program. It gives you live updates of the stars/constellations and can even go forward and back to the future. Neat stuff

Ever wonder what stars you are looking at outside, just turn on your stellarium

My co-workers and I were 'researching' with this. We were trying to find the Great Wall of China cause you know they say you can see it from space. There are tons of features to this. I can see it be very additive for map geeks and space freaks. count me in.

I can't get that site to load more than 99% but if it's anything like this one Hubblesite I love this stuff... I have about 40 images as my rotating wallpaper.