WorldWide Telescope

Posted 05-13-2008 by Jeremy McGovern

Have you downloaded Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope (WWT)? If not, you can find it here, free of charge.

Once you kick the tires, be sure to join our community. WWT communities provide tours, images, and other information relating to the night (and day) sky to members. So far, our community features tours covering galaxies, orbiting observatories, our impending (meaning long after you're gone) merger with Andromeda, and naked-eye open star clusters. We've also published a few of our most popular booklets as PDFs on WWT.

After you download WWT, you can join our community here.

Post any comments you have about your experiences with WWT below. Did it blow you away? Did it disappoint you? What do you think is the potential of this tool?

Comments (2) | Tags: Jeremy McGovern, observing, telescopes

Comments

To comment on the blog, you must be registered and logged into Astronomy.com. To register, click here.

shrug_eric said:

Time for an upgrade?

I couldn't run the app properly on my laptop or desktop - the debugger says there's not enough video memory.

I would like to hear how the application compares to StarryNight to TheSky...The all-sky interface of StarryNight is the most intuitive to date, I think. Does WWT have updates for satellite positions, etc.?

May 14, 2008 9:39 AM
Francis Reddy said:

As you've discovered, WWT is nearly as graphically intensive as a recent game. You'll need a minimum of a 3D-accelerated graphics card with 128 Mb of RAM; 256 Mb recommended. (Other minimum requirements here: www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6931). It works very well on the midrange Nvidia cards, some of which are now available for street prices of ~$100.

The interface is very similar to StarryNight's: You view the universe from within a "star ball." But WWT's panning and zooming is much smoother and more responsive than StarryNight's.

WWT doesn't have satellite positions, but it includes moons and planets and can drive a telescope to targeted objects. The main point of WWT is to make vast amounts of imagery available and provide an authoring tool so that people can share their knowledge of and interest in the sky.

May 21, 2008 1:15 PM