The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a new astronomy project by Microsoft Research that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth and in space and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe. Users can explore images of objects such as stars and planets in context to each other. So for example, if you located a star on the telescope, you would be able to zoom in and out of the map to see where that particular star is located with respect to earth or any other object in the universe, as long as it is captured by some telescope.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft 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.

Key highlights of the WorldWide Telescope include:

+ 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. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views, such as infrared and non-visible light.

+ 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.

Microsoft Research is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope as well as ten other large telescopes from around the world for data.

Click here to visit the homepage of WorldWide Telescope.