Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 22:30
AFP News Briefs ListMicrosoft site offers top telescope imagery of cosmos
Amateur astronomers Tuesday got Internet access to imagery from the best telescopes on earth and in space with a new service launched by Microsoft.
The US software giant's new Worldwide Telescope (www.worldwidetelescope.org) merges cosmic images from some of the world's most advanced telescopes into an online version of the universe available for anyone to explore.
"Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago," said Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Roy Gould said of the new service.
Worldwide Telescope competes with the Sky feature in Google Earth star-gazing service launched last year by Google.
Worldwide Telescope combines "terabytes of incredible imagery" with simple software to enable Internet users to study stars, planets and other aspects of the cosmos through lenses of the best telescopes currently in use, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a written release.
"The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe," Gates said.
"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," he said.
"I believe this new creation from Microsoft will have a profound impact on the way we view the universe."
Images
Fair goers visit the booth of software company Microsoft at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover in March 2008. Amateur astronomers Tuesday got Internet access to imagery from the best telescopes on earth and in space with a new service launched by Microsoft.
© 2007 AFP Nigel Treblin
