WorldWide Telescope - WWT

Everybody, who use a computer know Microsoft. Microsoft is not just a software company which develops only windows family operating system. It puts its head into many other activities including game development. Other than that, it has a research division, which most of us are not aware of. It is carrying out research on 55 areas of computing such as, speech recognition, programming tools and methodologies, language processing, operating system and networking, mathematical science and so on.( Its not a very big division. As of now, it has only 800 employees around the world (ie, US, UK ,India and China), including one branch in my city). But now, finally, Microsoft Research has become a familiar name…all coz of their new product – WorldWide Telescope or WWT..

What is WWT?

Microsoft describes it this way :

“Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images? Or do you want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth? How about taking a 5 minute break and viewing a panorama of a different city? Install WWT and start your explorations.”

It may sound like the popular Google Earth. But it is not. It is more similar to the feature that got added to Google earth, the Google Sky. So now there is a decent competitor for Google Sky. WWT gives more viewing options, about 50. But on the other side, there is no web based one and hence we need to install the WWT application. And to run it smoothly, we need a high end computer. As per Microsoft, these are the minimum requirement for a PC:

Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista® (recommended)
PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing and scrolling device
Microsoft® DirectX® version 9.0c and .NET Framework 2.0

WWT is also free (like Google Sky) but it says this is offered free in honor of Jim Gray, a researcher who was with Microsoft who was lost at sea, last year.

These developments in technologies is a great gift for those who really love to gaze the sky and its members… its all amazing….