Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope Brings the “Final Frontier” to Your Desktop

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

In February, Robert Scoble wrote that Microsoft researchers showed him something that made him cry. At the time, he couldn’t write about it, but it turned out to be this project, the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope.

It’s a desktop application, so you do have to download and install it. Think of it as a Google Earth for space. It’s dedicated to Jim Gray, the Microsoft Researcher who sailed out of San Francisco Bay in late January of 2007 and was never seen again. The first inklings of this project appeared in a 2002 paper he wrote with Alexander S. Szalay.

Before you ask: Windows only. Yep. You can run it on a Mac with Boot Camp, but …

In a press release, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said:

“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe. By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. 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.”

Microsoft is probably also thinking that the galaxy is much cooler than silly old Earth, and they don’t have to worry about security or privacy issues - or lawsuits - a la Google Earth or Google Street View.

Playing around with it … it’s cool. You pick something from a collection, and it scrolls around, or you can scroll yourself. It does need 3D acceleration, and although it will work with 1 MB 0f RAM, they recommend 2 MB.

Some of the coolness is shown above with Jupiter. Zoom in on something, right-click on it and you get more details. Just to be clear, it’s pre-release software, and you’ll run into bugs, such as artifacts and the like.

It does seem to be somewhat of a resource hog, as it sure slowed down my system while it was running. Still, I was impressed. It didn’t make me cry, but the images sure blew me away.