We are incredibly pleased to announce that the WorldWide Telescope is now open source under the MIT license and has become an independent project as part of the .NET Foundation. WorldWide Telescope began in 2007 as a Microsoft Research project, with early partners including astronomers…
The night sky holds a special fascination for children worldwide. They gaze at the moon and stars shining overhead, and wonder what they are and how they got there. This natural curiosity is dampened, however, for children who live in urban areas, where air and…
For the past five years, WorldWide Telescope (WWT) has served as an enriching resource in schools, museums, planetariums, and homes all over the world, inspiring students and astronomy enthusiasts with its detailed views of the heavens and interactive educational content. In celebration of its fifth…
In the five years since Microsoft Research initially launched the WorldWide Telescope (WWT), the product’s many features have been put to a variety of uses. Today in Chongqing, China, we saw yet another first for WorldWide Telescope: the unveiling of the first WWT-driven planetarium in…
Microsoft Research’s WorldWide Telescope (WWT) has brought spectacular images and engaging, informative tours of the night sky to countless personal computers—including, we hope, yours. But WorldWide Telescope also offers a powerful tool for planetariums, large and small, providing two things they never had before: views…
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending South by Southwest Interactive, one of the largest conferences on emerging technology in the world. The event is held in Austin, Texas, as part of the family of South by Southwest (SXSW) festivals that also include…
As the saying goes: everything is bigger in Texas. And coming this weekend, March 8 to 10, there will be a couple of Texas-sized telescopes at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin. Housed in the mammoth NASA Experience Tent, a wall-sized display…
First to explain… no, there is no time. Let me sum up: you are a scientist with complex geospatial data visualization challenges. We at Microsoft Research have a solution for you and we’re enhancing this through the release of a software library called Narwhal. (We…
I’ve done numerous public presentations of WorldWide Telescope (WWT) since 2008, but last month’s demos at the International Astronomical Union’s 2012 General Assembly (IAU2012) in Beijing were by far the most satisfying. Why? Because they were conducted primarily by student volunteers, eager to showcase the…
Recently, when I delivered my presentation, The Revolution in Astronomy Curricula Introduced by WorldWide Telescope (WWT), at INTED2011, I heard frequent comments from the audience that the variety of potential educational uses for WWT is "fascinating." The presentation was made possible by a collaboration between…
