Microsoft’s open-source ‘Worldwide Telescope’ is like Google Earth for astronomy

Microsoft has just announced that its “WorldWide Telescope” project (WWT) will hit open-source. WWT is the Google Earth of astronomy; a premiere online resource that allows users to create scripted paths through 3D environment and conduct astronomical education using interactive images and 3D models. The included images and models are the same resources used by actual astronomers when conducting their research, meaning, they’ve been captured using some of the most advanced telescopes in world! 

The project began in 2007 as “a free unified contextual visualization of the universe with global reach that lets users explore multispectral imagery, all of which is deeply connected to scholarly publications and online research databases,” and is now available as a standalone program or and API. And oddly enough, the software belongs to Microsoft — who knew?

Microsoft indicates that the “Guided Tours” are at the center of what it hopes others will build on, noting that one important feature of the program is the ability to tell stories about everything from stellar formation to planetary detection. A number of guided tours created by famous astronomers and educators are already available; for example, a tour by Harvard astronomer Alyssa Goodman explores how celestial dust in the Milky Way galaxy condenses to form stars and planets. Another tour, led by University of Chicago’s cosmologist Mike Gladders, shows a gravitational lens bending light from galaxies two billion years into the past. These tours can be paused at any moment, allowing complete clicking and camera panning.

Source: WWT