Entries tagged with wwt - Channel 10

WWT Comes To Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

The amazing WorldWide Telescope got a lot of hype pre-launch but you haven’t heard much about in recent days. Although now the WWT is being used by a number of astronomers, scientists, students, and space enthusiasts across the globe, the Microsoft Virtual Earth team decided to give it a little more exposure to the general public. To do so, they’re going to include a little WWT in Virtual Earth. According to Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth data centers host all of the data for WWT and the Earth in WWT is actually made of Virtual Earth tiles. So, in latest release of the Virtual Earth 3D control, the Virtual Earth team has now included the accurate placement of stars in space. Cool - now we have Earth and Sky in VE!

How to Hook Up Your Own Telescope to WorldWide Telescope

sarahintampa — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:08:00 GMT

Everyone who has tried the WorldWide Telescope so far has marveled at the images and the way it lets you explore the universe. WWT offers the most extensive collection of images ever combined via one singular application portal. However, there's much more you can do than just explore images, though. For stargazers, there is a way to hook up your own telescope to WWT. Assuming you have a telescope that connects to a computer via USB, you can take WWT with you on your laptop when you go stargazing to track your observing list.

Here's how to do this:

Install the ASCOM Platform software.
In WWT, click the top of the Telescope tab.
In the right corner, click the ASCOM logo to open a browser with the ASCOM Web site.
On the ASCOM page, click the text link to the downloads page.
On the ASCOM Download Library page, click the text link for the latest ASCOM Platform software, and then click Run when the File Download and WorldWide Telescope Explorer dialog boxes display. After you click the ASCOM Platform software download link, you may need to close the browser with the ASCOM Web site and click the WWT button on the taskbar to see the File Download dialog box.
In the ASCOM Platform Setup dialog box, click OK to confirm that you have installed the latest Critical Update or Service Pack.
In the ASCOM Platform Setup dialog box, follow the steps to finish installing the ASCOM Platform software.

Then, configure the ASCOM software to match your telescope:

Connect your telescope to your computer with a USB cable.
In WWT, click the top of the Telescope tab.
In the right corner, click Choose, click the down arrow, and then select the type of telescope that you have.
In the ASCOM Telescope Chooser dialog box, click Properties, and then configure the ASCOM software to match your telescope configuration.
When you close WWT, a message box asking if you want to save your settings changes will display, click Yes.

WorldWide Telescope Launched

sarahintampa — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:53:00 GMT

Today, the WorldWide Telescope has been made available to the general public. You may remember the WorldWide Telescope as the technology that made Scoble cry, but even without that hype, the project stands on its own as an amazing platform for scientific exploration and discovery. This virtual telescope is actually comprised of terabytes of imagery, collected and combined from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Using Microsoft's Visual Experience Engine, you can use the telescope to pan and zoom through the night sky, moving in and around planets, stars, and even galaxies. Of course you can view the moon and the planets with WWT, but the imagery from this telescope also lets you do things you've never been able to before from your computer - like watching stars being born or galaxies collide.

For both scientists and educators, the WorldWide Telescope will help to teach astronomy, computational science, and even provide opportunities for scientific discovery. For users of the telescope, there are rich media tours to that offer narration, music, text, and graphics to guide you through the night sky. It's like going to the planetarium without leaving your home! You can also make your own tours to share with others - a feature that teachers will really enjoy.

I've been playing with WWT tonight and it really is amazing to see the galaxies in their actual positions in the universe and be able to zoom and move them around on the screen. There are several different collections of images to explore - constellations, Hubble images, planets, and many more that I wasn't familiar with but were just as amazing. Click on one of the items from the collection zooms you right to the object in the sky. WWT is rich with technology that will appeal to astronomers, but it's still simple enough for the everyday user.

The telescope is based on technology that came out of Microsoft Research, an area of the company that has operated for 16 years which focuses on long-term, broad-based projects such as this. It's built on work that began with Jim Gray’s SkyServer and contributions to Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

You can view the WorldWide Telescope now from here: www.worldwidetelescope.org.

TechFest 2008: World Wide Telescope

Tina — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:02:00 GMT

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.