Now Your Pc Can Take You To The Stars
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday May 14, 2008
MICROSOFT has launched a free program download that will turn home computers into mini-planetariums capable of displaying high-resolution images of millions of stars, planets and other celestial bodies.
The project, called the WorldWide Telescope (WWT), is the result of several years' work by a Microsoft research team.It has drawn lavish praise from some of the world's leading space scientists and educators, including Dr Roy Gould, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who said: "This really pushes the envelope."The program works in the same way as many online mapping tools, allowing users to zoom around on an interactive canvas combining images and data drawn from the world's leading astronomical research organisations.At launch, the WWT had access to 12 terabytes of data - enough to fill the equivalent of 1.2 million books. But like the universe, this will expand as images are added. Dr Gould believed the WWT would give amateur astronomers, and even novices, an opportunity to assist the scientific community in furthering their research."This is going to change our relationship with the night sky in a significant way," he said.A key feature of the program is the way in which users - any user, not just the experts - will be able to create rich media tours to showcase features found on the WWT database.For example, one of the tours will transport you across the Martian landscape using images captured in the Mars Rover exploration program."For millennia ... every different culture has their own story about the heavens," said Dr Curtis Wong, a leading Microsoft research scientist and the head of the WWT project, in a telephone interview. "The WorldWide Telescope is an opportunity for people to create and share those stories."The program can be downloaded at www.WorldWideTelescope.org.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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