20 May 2008 12:13
Microsoft has released a free public beta of its WorldWide Telescope, which is software that lets both amateur and professional stargazers explore the universe from their PCs. The WorldWide Telescope is a rich web application that accesses high-resolution images taken by ground- and Earth-orbiting telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
The main screen of the Worldwide Telescope contains stars visible to the human eye that are mapped into constellations. You can navigate with your mouse in any direction and zoom in or out with its scroll wheel. Points of interest appear when you mouse over. You can also use the top menu or search to find celestial bodies. Here you can see that the edge of the Big Dipper's cup does indeed point to Polaris or the North Star, which is located at the plus sign.
To get started, you can click on thumbnail images of your choice — including planets, moons, and galaxies — and your telescope will automatically search the sky on your screen to find their location. You can then zoom in for more details.
Poor little Pluto gets to stand with the planets, even though it isn't one anymore.
Here is Mars. Remember, this is a telescope simulation so it doesn't give details a Mars rover could.
Somewhere near the Martian North Pole is the proposed destination for the Mars Phoenix lander, which is scheduled to touch down on 25 May.
This image seemed to jump every few seconds, but that happens because it is rotating slowly on your screen.
You can use the telescope settings to explore the universe on your own.
Here is Neptune.
To use the telescope tool, you need to download drivers from a link that sends you to the Ascom Institute.
Since this is brand new, some familiar sights are missing. For example, one of the most interesting bodies of the universe, Saturn's moon Titan, is not found.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a thumbnail, but is not found per se; it shows up as white spot. Remember, this is a beta — and it's free.
A welcome feature: the instructional short movies about a variety of stellar subjects. This is a screenshot of one explaining the stellar winds that blow from the Orion Nebula.
This shows how stellar winds from the Orion galaxy bounce off a nearby sun.
The WorldWide Telescope allows you to view images from space telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. You can even see an X-ray view of the sky with the Chandra telescope. You can find sights such as black holes, radiation clouds and supernovas.
This is one of the more famous images from the Hubble telescope called the "Pillars of Creation", which is the birthplace of billions of stars.
You can see sunspots when zooming in on our Sun.
You can also zoom in on the Earth but don't expect to find your house. Guess which city is shown here? Answer on the next image.
It appears that the WorldWide Telescope will find the location of some stars but may not give a true image. For example, this is how Betelgeuse, which is a red giant star located on the tip of one of Orion's arms, appears on the WorldWide Telescope. Instead of showing up as red, it looks ghostly white.
(The image on the previous page is Boston and its harbour.)
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