If anything, WWTelescope is too advanced, offering a slew of advanced and sometimes incomprehensible options aimed at professionals and true hobbyists. You can even hook up your telescope to it. But it's still great, interesting fun for the average user. I just wasted an hour or so "researching" it for this article, and left with the same semi-accomplished feeling I get when I waste time on Wikipedia.

Microsoft products have often fallen behind Google on the coolness factor of their products. This time they definitely have the search giant beat.

The excuse for being in Trieste is the twice yearly "interoperability workshop" of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). Arriving at this meeting an air of gloom hung like a fog, as there seemed to be two irreconcilably different approaches to specifying how you access database tables (TAP/QL and TAP/PARAM if you want to know) and it seemed that for the first time in its history the IVOA process might not converge, and two VOs might emerge, one either side of the Atlantic. However .... while email debates turn so easily into flame wars, once you are drinking beer together, you can't keep up the hostilities. It wasn't easy... but its look like we have converged on an awkward but workable compromise.

But it gets better. If QL and PARAM look like warring camps, just try Google and Microsoft. In one session we had talks about Google Sky (Ryan Scranton) and World Wide Telescope (Jonathan Fay). They are both fantastic pieces of software. Primarily they are for education and outreach rather than pro work, but it won't stay that way - WWT is already built on VO protocols (you can do a USNO-B cone search at the position you have panned to...) and they are hooking up with the Harvard IIC folk to build a "WWT-pro" version. Meanwhile as I mentioned some months back, VO hackers have already been building VO plugins for Google Sky using the Google Keyhole Markup Language (KML). Now here is the stunner .. the guy from Microsoft said that WWT would support KML. Wow ! Peace and harmony.

But wait. It gets better. One of the longest standing wars is of course PC vs Mac. Well... when the Microsoft guy arrived at the podium, he had his talk on a Macbook. Sure, it was a Mac running VISTA using Bootcamp... but still. Microsoft guy. On a Mac. I hear the angels singing.

A través de la columna semanal Desde el Teclado, Javier Matuk nos comenta sobre una nueva aplicación de Microsoft. Se trata de World Wide Telescope (WWT), un programa con el cual podemos convertir nuestra computadora en un telescopio virtual.

El WWT trabaja con imágenes tomadas de los más importantes telescopios con base terrestre y espacial, puedes tomar distintos tours a través de la bobeda espacial, las opciones son realmente fabulosas. La descarga del software es gratuita, debes considerar que se requiere tener una computadora robusta, sobre todo en la parte de gráficos, pero al parecer la experiencia lo vale.

Enjoy a space tour in your computer, using the best ground and space based telescopes, just install World Wide Telescope, a new Microsoft Research's software.

I've just downloaded World Wide Telescope, Microsoft's latest offering to the world. It's free and here's why(according to their What is World Wide Telescope page);

Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before. 

That's very nice of Microsoft, but I can't help but wonder if it's not a response to the open source revolution that is taking place. Regardless, it looks like an amazing tool that is going to be a truly wonderful resource for Science teachers and anyone with an interest in checking out the universe.

I'ma bit of a night sky lover. A few years ago a friend and I spent some nights getting up at 2am and drove to a sports field so that we could check out meteor showers that were visible. We saw some incredible meteors; the most spectaculor one blazed across the sky and was a true aha moment. It sounds cliche, but losing yourself in the night sky does make you question our purpose here - why is it that we push ourselves so hard and get caught up in the minutiae of life?

Enough philosophising! I lost myself in World Wide Telescope for 45 mins and didn't notice time passing. Still don't know how to navigate it properly. Best remedy for this is to introduce it to a class and let them work it out for me! Or alternately, take this advice from Microsoft;

Click the top of the Guided Tours tab and then click the Welcome thumbnail to watch a guided tour showing you how to navigate in WWT.

It's a big file to download (20MB) but it's pretty impressive. Give it a try.

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This is a new segment on the Skeptic Dad blog.  Every few weeks I'll post about scientific things in the news that you can apply to your own family.  Hopefully, you'll be able to make science education fun by developing your child's curiousity and enthusiasm for scientific exploration.

The first item I want to bring to your attention is the new World Wide Telescope.  Those parents who have installed Google Sky onto their desktop will not want to miss Microsoft's sleek and stylish answer to their cyber-counterparts at Google.  World Wide Telescope is accessible, free to download, and the functions are easy to use.  It's the perfect complement to an actual telescope.

There are a variety of summer camps, some of them religious and others secular, but there is only one Camp Quest, the first summer camp for children of secular freethinkers, humanists, and atheists.  The camp is meant to foster a rational and logical worldview, and to focus on the natural world over the supernatural.  You can find a Camp Quest in Ohio, Minnesota, Smokey Mountains, California, Michigan, and Ontario.  I don't blame people for being a little concerned about brainwashing, but the whole point of this camp is to avoid dogma by encouraging the campers to think for themselves.  My own parents were concerned when I brought up the subject of this camp, but they forgot that I was sent to a christian camp as a child.  Why not send your kids to a humanist freethought camp?

Expelled Exposed has been doing a lovely job of squashing the arguments in Ben Stein's despicable Expelled "documentary".  One video on the site challenges the intelligent design argument of the complexity of the eye.  Check it out...

Chiara Badia

Fonte: BBC News

Here's the link to the BBC article.

Ya está disponible para su descarga (versión beta) el "World Wide Telescope" de Microsoft, para poder explorar las estrellas.

El WWT es un entorno de visualización tipo web 2.0 que permite que tu ordenador funcione como un telescopio virtual, en el se muestran las mejores imágenes del espacio captadas con los mejores telescopios del mundo para una perfecta exploración del universo.

[What is WTT? - Word Wide Telescope]

Lamentablemente la descarga está disponible sólo para usuarios Microsoft.

Se podría decir que es algo parecido al proyecto de Google (Google Sky), sólo que con un poco más de maquillaje.

Sugiero que primero verifiques los requerimientos necesarios antes de instalar para ver si tu PC/Windows puede soportar el programa.

Κυρίες και κύριοι, υποδεχτείτε the ultimate frontier, από την Microsoft Research, το WWT ή World Wide Telescope.

Δεν έχω δει κάτι παρόμοιο. Και αν το έχω δει ήταν σε κάποια παιχνίδια. Η πλοήγηση στον virtual ουρανό και το interface καταπληκτικά. Το zooming, η μετακίνηση σε διάφορους τομείς του ουρανού τόσο απαλά, ελαστικά.

Αλλά...τι είναι το World Wide Telescope; Πρόκειται για ένα νέο software της Microsoft, ακόμα σε beta version ( Spring beta ) που πραγματικά σας ανοίγει τις πόρτες του ουρανού-διαστήματος. 3D περιβάλλον για το virtual τηλεσκόπιο. Το πραγματικά σημαντικό στην όλη υπόθεση δεν είναι το virtual τηλεσκόπιο αλλά το όλο περιβάλλον. Πρόκεται όχι απλά για μια εφαρμογή αλλά για ένα περιβάλλον μέσα στο οποίο μπορεί κάποιος να χτίσει τις δικές του presentations, τα δικά του tours στον ουρανό, να δημιουργήσει δικές του collections, slide shows, να συμμετέχει σε communities, να ελέγχει το δικό του τηλεσκόπιο κ.ά.

Σταματώ εδώ. Σας προτείνω ανεπιφύλακτα τη χρήση του, αξίζει.

Τέλος, σας δίνω ραντεβού σήμερα ή το αργότερο αύριο με ένα review που ετοιμάζω για το WWT.

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org

M

A partir del segundo semestre de 2008 estará disponible a nivel mundial el Telescopio Virtual de Microsoft 'World Wide Telescope', el cual podrá descargarse gratis por Internet.

En un comunicado, la empresa de software detalla que los usuarios podrán navegar en el planeta Tierra y en el universo a través de rutas personales sobre galaxias, planetas y constelaciones.

Microsoft señala que este desarrollo tecnológico permite que incluso niños de seis años puedan explorar el universo en un ambiente de visualización integral, que combina imágenes de los telescopios terrestres y espaciales más avanzados del mundo.

Desarrollos como el 'WorldWide Telescope' permitirán que cada vez más niños se interesen por las ciencias y las matemáticas, en tanto que para los adultos les ofrecerá más posibilidades para conocer y viajar por el universo desde una computadora, dijo la firma tecnológica.

Explica que el 'World Wide Telescope' se ejecutará en Visual Experience Engine, una tecnología de Microsoft Research que permite la visualización de imágenes panorámicas y con acercamiento del cielo nocturno.

Además, mezcla terabytes de imágenes, datos y narraciones de múltiples fuentes a través de Internet en una experiencia integral e inmersiva y también se puede ejecutar en otros escenarios, como recorridos en parques, monumentos nacionales o destinos vacacionales.

Microsoft resalta que este telescopio virtual estuvo entre los proyectos más destacados del Techfest 2008, un encuentro anual que reúne a investigadores y empleados de la empresa, para hacer una demostración de los desarrollos e innovaciones de sus laboratorios.

Fuente: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

Si quieres lee un poco más de este apasionante post y además enterarte de la competencia que le está dando Google, entra a Recorrido virtual por el universo

Now please understand...this is on your home computer. This is allowing regular people access to some of humanity's most incredible imagery. This technology will allow us to see back in time millions of years from distant stars and galaxies.

Check out the presentation on YouTube, or go to the TED site and get the talk in high-def. Awesome.

I'll be doing most of my technology and business blogging over at Webguild.org from now on, with more personal stuff here at Joe Duck.

It even made Scoble cry.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference that brings together some of the great minds in all three of those fields and runs talks, showcases and demos. I'd love to go someday! Until that day, over on www.ted.com they put up some of the highlights for free viewing and that will have to do me! When you're finished here pop over there and have a look at the biggest item on the front page right now... I can't believe I nearly missed this; thankfully Claire Dillon pointed it out on her blog and I got the heads up on the thing that "made Robert Scoble cry".

Microsoft are launching a new toy for the hardcore geeks, the casual nerds, the sky lovers, the star gazers, the astro dabblers, the average Joe Soap, the "big kid inside", the teachers, the alien seekers, the physicists and above all the children! The "WorldWideTelescope" (clever naming too) is a digital representation of the night sky that you can scan and pan around, zoom in on, zoom deep into (no really, really deep - like think "Space Porn"). I don't know how far the zoom goes or to what resolution but Ray Gould mentioned, "the worlds best telescopes (on Earth and in space)", in his talk at TED so I would assume they are pretty much the best you can get without your own observatory. (See the talk here.)

I have been a sky watcher since I was a very small kid and while I never learned all the constellations, I did regularly fall asleep at the window while gazing out at the stars wishing I had a telescope. Later I used to sneak out at night to lie on the lawn (or the sand dunes or a handy golf course) and watch the stars. Now, while I wouldn't have replaced that with booting up an application and panning across the sky (warmer but far less fun) I would most definitely have given the tooth fairy all my teeth (and those of my friends and neighbours) to have been able to zoom in and look deep into the nebulae and star clusters or to have been able to pull up fascinating facts right there and then without hitting the books and trying to reconcile that wonderful, beautiful, deep vista of space with the boringly flat and comparatively unfulfilling pictures and diagrams.

All in all this is fantastic news and I'm pretty excited to see how it actually flies! Forget Google Earth (one of my favourite apps of the past few years) I'm waiting eagerly to get going "where no man has gone before"!

Edit (01:40 04/03/2008): Robert Scoble has just commented on Claire's post that there is a "better" video of the World Wide Telescope on http://www.fastcompany.tv - unfortunately I can't confirm that because all I get is a "Sorry" page. (Scoble did say today that they are having "some technical difficulties — our engineers have been up all night optimizing databases and getting things turned on")

Further Edit (01:50 04/03/2008): Scoble's video seems to be up and running now and looks pretty good

This is from TED talks and has just been posted. It's the first view of the World Wide telescope, a product of Microsoft, that is going to be available as a free download at the website worldwidetelescope.org in the Northern Spring of this year. Very interesting that Microsoft is offering it as a free download - this is why according to their FAQ page;

"Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe as never before."

Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard Centre for Astrophysics, thinks it's truly transformative, enabling you to experience and tour the universe. You can create your own tours of the universe and share them with friends and they're interactive- imagine all the possibilities this presents for classrooms and learning about astronomy - why wasn't this around when I was a kid? I may have been an astronomer now if it had have been. I've always been fascinated by the night sky - I love to lose myself in it and contemplate my place in the world. This is going to be wonderful and I can't wait to play and share it with my kids. Thanks to Jeff Utecht for the heads up to this from a Twitter post. 

Apparently its so good it made Robert Scoble cry.

Watch the TED conference video demonstration. (Highly recommended.)

"The WorldWide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth ... and in space ... and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe. This new resource will change the way we do astronomy."

World Wide Telescope (WWT)

which will blend together terabytes of astronomical imagery and stories into one online environment. It's destined to be an amazing mix of science, education, and artistry -- I'm impatient to see it work! -- it will be available sometime this Spring.

See the preview at TED 2008

Microsoft revealed the World Wide Telescope yesterday after it had been one of the worst kept secrets of the um ... past few weeks. The buzz started a few weeks ago when Robert Scoble announced that he'd seen technology that had made him cry (in the good way, not the every day bad way).

What Is The World Wide Telescope?

Think Google Earth for the universe. Microsoft have created an application that has stitched together satellite imagery and data from space telescopes such as Hubble and enables us all to take a wander through the parts of the universe where this kind of data exists.

Now I know that Google Earth has a feature to explore space, but it's rubbish and according to the massed ranks of scientists and children that have sat in front of Microsoft's publicity video cameras, WWT will make our jaws drop in wonder.

I'm going to remain sceptical so I can be pleasantly surprised when it becomes available to the public.

Of course, the great strength of Google Earth, is it's relevance. I live on Earth and I like to visit places on Earth. I think this is probably true of most of my readers. We've all checked out our house on Google Earth and peered into the garden of that big house at the end of the road etc or shown someone the nice little village where we went on holiday last year.

I'm not sure there will be many people thinking, "Ooh, I used to live on Alpha Centauri, I wonder if my old house is still there." But if the hype is right, World Wide Telescope isn't just going to be limited to the astronomy community (though they'll get most out of it) , it should bring a little bit of wonder to us all and that can't be a bad thing.

For me, nice thing about all of this is that Microsoft launches WWT at TED, which is great for TED as the massive coverage that this project is going to receive will undoubtedly bring TED.com to a much wider audience. If you don't know what TED is, throw out your TV and get on over to their web site now. www.ted.com

Ted Have also posted a video of the launch presentation. www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/224

You can check out the WWT web site at worldwidetelescope.org

If I told you "a telescope" you'd make fun of me, right? Tell me I'm lame and that I don't deserve to be a geek and that I should run away and join the circus, right?

Well, that's what I saw.

Or, more accurately, the WorldWide Telescope.

UPDATE: the official site is now up.

Like I said, sounds lame. How could that possibly be the most fabulous thing I've seen Microsoft do in years? And that's not just me talking. My friends who've seen it say that I actually underhyped it. That's the first time anyone has said I underhyped something when I was trying to be so over-the-top with hype.

Like I said, it isn't the product that's impressive. You've gotta see this thing to really understand. My video will be up on Monday.

But, I'll try to give you an idea of what made me so impressed.

Think of Google Maps or Microsoft's Live Maps. How dragging a map around lets you see the world in a new way. Zoom in. Zoom out. You have the whole world in a window on your screen.

Now, think of the sky.

When Brian Cox, physicist at CERN, spoke at LIFT last year he told us to hold our hands out, put our thumb up and realize there are hundreds of thousands of stars in just that small patch of sky.

Now you've probably looked at imagery from the Hubble Telescope. So you know there are entire galaxies out there. But what are you missing?

Context.

In other words, you have no idea where in the sky those things you see in Sky and Telescope magazine are. You're missing context.

So, back to the World Wide Telescope. You drag around the sky. There's Mars. There's the big dipper. There's Betelguese. Etc. It's just like the star party you probably attended in college.

But it has one difference between any telescope you've ever looked at.

You can zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

We picked a point of light inside the big dipper. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Holy shit, it's two galaxies colliding. It looked like a star. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

Now the magic happened.

Curtis Wong said: "let's switch to a different telescope and see what these two galaxies colliding are spitting out."

He clicked a button and we saw a completely different view of the same colliding galaxies. This time we weren't looking at visible light, but at something else. I think it might have been infrared, or maybe a look at other kinds of radiation being kicked out. He had about 10 of the world's telescopes to look at. I forget all the names, but that detail is in the video coming on Monday.

Zoom out. Zoom out. Zoom out. Zoom out. Pan over to Mars. What a glorious view. You've never seen Mars like that through your $2,000 Celestron Telescope.

Oh, you have one of those nice Celestron telescopes with the motorized base? Click a button and your telescope points to what you're looking at in this piece of software.

And there's a ton more, the demo just goes on and on and on.

Some other things.

1. It's dedicated to Jim Gray, the Microsoft Researcher who sailed out of San Francisco Bay about a year ago never to be heard from again. He started this project with a paper back in 2002.
2. It runs only on Windows. It's coded in C#/.NET, you'll meet the developer in our video and you'll hear more about that then.
3. It's free, but only in a private alpha right now. I'm not sure when it'll be released to the public. I bet that we'll find that out at Microsoft's Tech Fest next week (TechCrunch and other bloggers are going to that, so Im sure we'll hear lots more details on the other cool stuff Microsoft Research is doing).
4. There are terabytes of data, all seamlessly integrated for the first time here.
5. There are narrations and tours. I believe you can even add your own, so you can leave a little tour for your kids to see the sky in a new way.
6. Mike Arrington and Dan Farber figured it out first.

So, why cry over a telescope?

Because I just saw the world I live in, er, excuse me, the universe I live in in a new way that I never had imagined before.

I cried because I imagined all the kids, like my sons, who will be inspired by what they see. It took me back to the days when John Kennedy wanted us to go to the moon. Hint: there's a lot more out there to explore.

I cried because I realized just how much work, money, and all that went into making these images. I never had access to them before. Certainly not in this way so I could compare them by clicking a button. As a taxpayer who's helped pay for some of these telescopes it's the first time I've seen the results of my and your, investments in our scientific research.

It's human to look out at the sky and wonder what's going on out there. This takes us a LOT further into our understanding of just what is.

And,, yes, that's worth crying some inspirational tears. Thank you to Microsoft Research for inspiring me in a way that Microsoft hasn't inspired me in years.

And, also, sorry to the teams that I caused some PR troubles for. I hope you'll forgive me for getting a little excited. I couldn't contain myself. It isn't everyday that you get to see such an inspiring piece of software.