TechFest 2008: World Wide Telescope

Posted By: Tina Wood | Mar 12th, 2008 @ 8:02 AM | 10,219 Views | 5 Comments

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The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich, Web 2.0 visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of interactive guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from major universities and planetariums.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables panning and zooming across the night sky. Zoom into the center of a nebula to see the condensation of a dust cloud and the birth of a new star. View the moon and selected planets, and see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth. Discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago.

WWT blends many terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-immersive experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with WWT’s simple, powerful user interface. WWT is a collaborative effort between Microsoft Research and a variety of academic and governmental agencies. Microsoft Research will be releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education community with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe as never before.

Tags: Tech Fest, WWT

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