Microsoft Looks to the Sky

By Greg McNevin

May 15, 2008: Taking a leaf out of Google’s book, Microsoft has just released a new tool to help stargazers get a closer peek at the heavens from their computers.

Like the extremely popular Google Earth and the company’s own galaxy-viewing software Sky, Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope stitches together immense volumes of digital images of the night sky, enabling those with the software and a broadband internet connection to browse galaxies and star systems like they would streets on an online map.

With 12 terabytes of images sourced from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the software offers amazingly detailed images that one can zoom impressively far into.

The software is the result of several years of work by a small research team at Microsoft R&D centre, and includes the ability for users to create guided tours, such as exploring the surface of planets like Mars.

WWT has been developed and released free of charge in honour of the late Dr Kim Gray, a Microsoft computer scientist who specialised in astronomy projects that was lost at sea in 2007. Microsoft sees the software as an educational tool, and hopes it will capture the imagination of children and propel many into professions such as engineering, astronomy and science.

The beta version of Microsoft’s software can be downloaded from www.worldwidetelescope.org for free.

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