Several days ago we wrote about something extraordinary that Robert Scoble said was coming from Microsoft and it was going to be announced on February 27th. When he saw a live demo of it at a recent visit to Redmond, he said it was enough to make his eyes well up with tears. TechCrunch is now speculating that this extraordinary something from Microsoft is a WorldWide Telescope. The desktop software would be available for Windows users and would allow them, as Michael Arrington says, to “pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow. Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble Telescope as well as ten or so earthbound telescopes around the world for data. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views such as infrared and non-visible light.”
This would be wonderful for people who are interested in astronomy but don’t necessarily have the time or the access to the real thing. I will be very interested to see how this stacks up against Google Sky or other desktop software like Stellerium.
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