Microsoft Research Open Sources WorldWide Telescope

kfogel writes: Microsoft Research has open sourced WorldWide Telescope, releasing it under the MIT license and donating the code to the .NET Foundation. The code is up on GitHub at github.com/WorldWideTelescope, and there are demos and more details at WorldWideTelescope.org. Go forth and explore!

So...what is this?

[Sowelu]

I looked briefly through TFA but they're really uninformative when it comes to summarizing (or they're full of giant pictures and videos). What's the significance of this thing? Is it just Google Earth for stars? Why does it need a client?

Re:

[rochrist]

I noticed that. But if you scroll to the bottom of the WWT homepage, there's a pretty informative FAQ. http://worldwidetelescope.org/... [worldwidetelescope.org]

Darn, I thought it was a real worldwide telescope

[presidenteloco]

You know, with a synthetic aperture nearly the diameter of the Earth created by fusing time-synched data from telescopes all around the Earth looking in the same direction of sky at the same time.

 

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

Re:

[adolf]

Agreed at the poor state of the TFS, and TFA.

It appears to be a Google Earth for stars. And there is an HTML5 web client [worldwidetelescope.org], which amused me for a few minutes.

Re:So...what is this?

[safetyinnumbers]

Is it just Google Earth for stars?

You mean like http://www.google.com/sky [google.com]

Re:So...what is this?

[g01d4]

It falls under the category of planetarium software [wikipedia.org]. The WWT user guide has more information. This kind of software is often used when you're curious to find out what's overhead on a given evening. These programs take the place of finder charts if you need to manually point the telescope. If it supports telescope connections (which WWT does) you can use it to point, click and point your telescope (some programs such as TheSky even have an option for satellite tracking). You typically can define field of views for your imaging cameras (e.g. to make sure there's a decent guide star). These programs come in useful for old school photometry when you're looking for a suitable comparison and check star. And there's the giant pictures, tours and classroom stuff as well.

What it is

[Lord Duran]

About

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a visualization environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the world’s best ground- and space-based telescopes for the exploration of the universe. WWT blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Explorers of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the cosmos using WWT’s simple and powerful user interface.

Source: their website [worldwidetelescope.org].

Link to an error in FAQ

[gameboyhippo]

In their FAQ page, I wanted to learn more, so I clicked the provided link and got an ASP.net error page. It's been a long time since I've seen one.

http://worldwidetelescope.org/... [worldwidetelescope.org]

Wow. Just wow

[Snotnose]

This article has been up for over 3 hours, yet nobody knows yet WTF Worldwide Telescope is.

Sad state of affairs for a summary and an article.

Sounds like they "Get It" wrt Free Software

[requerdanos]

FTFA: "[W]e decided to make the WorldWide Telescope available under an open source license to allow any individual or organization to adapt and extend the functionality to meet any research or educational need.

We believe that extensions and improvements to the software will continuously enhance formal and informal learning and astronomical research. Making the code available will also help ensure that the data, protocols and techniques used are also available for others to inspect, use, adapt and improv