Exploring the
universe can be as simple as turning on your home computer thanks to a new
digital archive filled with views from some of the world's best land- and
space-based telescopes.
Microsoft
officially launched the free online WorldWide Telescope, which allows Internet
denizens to pan around and zoom through the night sky.
"The WorldWide
Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible
for everyone to explore the universe," said Bill Gates, chairman of
Microsoft. "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."
That
freedom to explore the heavens comes courtesy of both software and Web 2.0
services that take advantage of the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine. The WorldWide
Telescope takes terabytes of the best images from professional telescopes and creates
high-resolution panoramas of celestial bodies that relate to their actual
position in the sky.
Choosy
users can decide which telescope they want to peer through, including the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space Telescope and
others. NASA continues to upgrade
existing space telescopes such as Hubble, and has plans for future
telescopes that could go on
the moon.
Adventurous
types can also leap back and forth between past and future to see the changing
locations of the planets in the sky, or view the universe through different
wavelengths of the light spectrum to reveal strange mysteries such as a giant hole
in the universe.
People can examine
everything from the solar system to beyond the Milky Way galaxy, or follow
guided tours headed by astronomers and educators at major universities and
planetariums, drawing praise from some professional astronomers for its
educational value and its usefulness in their own work.
"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. "I believe this new creation from
Microsoft will have a profound impact on the way we view the universe."
The WorldWide
Telescope stands as "a beautiful platform for explaining and getting
people excited about astronomy, and I think the professional astronomers will
come to use it as well," said Roy Williams, senior scientist from the
California Institute of Technology.
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