By Eric Danley

Its not often I praise Microsoft, but wow they have a winner here. Utilizing their Visual Experience Engine, which is the same technology behind their Google Earth competitor, “Microsoft Virtual Earth.” Basically, it takes and stitches together photos and scientific data and creates a virtual universe for to explore. It was just announced today at the TED conference, so details are scant but I think its a web app. According to The Official Site:

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

According to Dr. Roy Gould from Harvard University:

“The WorldWide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth … and in space … and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe. This new resource will change the way we do astronomy … the way we teach astronomy … and, most importantly, I think it’s going to change the way we see ourselves in the universe,” said Dr. Roy Gould of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. “The creators of the WorldWide Telescope have now given us a way to have a dialogue with our universe.”

Most Compelling Features:

• WorldWide Telescope is an observatory on your desktop, allowing you to see the sky in a way you have never seen before; individual exploration, multi-wavelength views, stars and planets within context to each other, zoom in/out, and a capability for anyone to create and share a tour of the universe.

• The Visual Experience Engine delivers seamless panning zooming around the night sky.

• WWT delivers seamless integration of science:-relevant information including multi-wavelength, multiple telescope distributed image and data sets, and one-click contextual access to distributed Web information and data sources.

Its being released in memory of Jim Gray, and will be free of charge.

Technorati Tags: WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft, Edutech, Astronomy