Have you ever dreamed of looking through the Hubble Space Telescope and viewing all the stars in the sky in all its glory? Well now you can thanks to Microsoft and their new application called WorldWide Telescope.

This software which launched this Monday is capable of displaying various planets, star systems and galaxies. The application allows users to zoom in and out on different aspects of space with very high detail, almost like looking through a very professional telescope. According to Reuters this technology was capable by using the images from various powerful telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

These images all put together total up to an immense 12 terabytes of data. Its quite an amazing feat to be able to put together all of these archived images into a uniform picture of space which anyone can zoom in to see fine details of space dust. I can see this definitely being used as a great educational tool and the fact Microsoft has released this software for free of charge just makes it more accessible to the public.

According to Microsoft they are dedicating this program free of charge in memory of Jim Gray, a former Microsoft researcher. Jim Gray who went sailing off the coast of California last year apparently vanished, and is considered missing. The reason this software is dedecated to Jim Gray is because before he went missing he spent a great deal of time working on projects that dealt with organizing data with astronomers along with satellite images.

If you wish to get a glimpse of this program in action head on over to www.worldwidetelescope.org and download the software to start exploring the universe.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 6:48 am under Microsoft, Software, Technology.

Read more entries by Mike Ferro.
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