World Wide Telescope

Если вы ещё не посмотрели World Wide Telescope, тогда мы идем к вам.

Проект вышел из beta статуса и доступен всем желающим. World Wide Telescope - это ответ Microsoft на Google Earth + Google Sky -
программа в которой можно путешествовать по космосу, земле, планетам, галактикам, созвездиям и звездным скоплениям.

Проект создавался в тесном сотрудничестве с NASA и потому количество и качество космических снимков очень, очень впечатляет.

Заметки россыпью:

• Страничка проекта на Microsoft Research: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/wwt/
• Вдохновителем продукта был всемирно известный исследователь Jim Grey
• NASA передало Microsoft фото с телескопов Hubble, Spitzer и Chandra для использования продукте
• Существует веб-клиент (MS Silverlight) - и вроде даже более или менее работает
• Windows версию можно подключать к настоящему телескопу и направлять его в интересующую точку неба!!! (требует дополнительного софта, конечно же)
• Количество источников изображений впечатляет:
• Digitized Sky Survey (Color)
  A sky survey in the infrared wavelength created by the Space Telescope Science Institute's (STScI) Catalogs and Surveys Group from the Palomar and U.K. Schmidt telescope photographic sky survey plates. Each plate covers 6.5 x 6.5 degrees of the sky.
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Color)
  A wide-field deep sky survey that will generate detailed images taken at the optical wavelength covering more than a quarter of the sky, determine the positions and absolute brightness of hundreds of millions of celestial objects, measure the distance to more than one million galaxies and 10,000 quasars, and produce a three-dimensional picture of the universe.
• Hydrogen Alpha
  A full sky map generated by Douglas Finkbeiner at Princeton University compositing the Virginia Tech Spectral line Survey (VTSS) in the northern hemisphere and the Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas (SHASSA) in the southern hemisphere. The hydrogen-alpha filters block out as much of the hydrogen emission spectrum leaving only a bandpass from 0.5 Angstrom to 1 Angstrom deep in the red end of the visible light spectrum.
• IR Dust Map
  The Infrared (IR) Dust Map is an all-sky, 100 micron, far infrared (12, 20, 25, and 100 micron passbands) survey modulated by dust temperatures and then calibrated to be dust reddening in magnitudes.
• WMAP Microwave Cosmic Background
  The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was a three-year, all-sky survey that concluded in 2006. The survey was conducted at several microwave bands (K, Ka, Q, V and W) to measure and map the cosmic microwave background radiation and its fluctuations.
• US Naval Observatory B1.0
  An inclusive all-sky catalog from the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station (USNOFS) Precision Measuring Machine project. It contains over 1,042,618,261 entries for stars and galaxies. Every point on the sky is covered at several epochs and at several wavelengths, making it possible to construct a catalog that includes positions, proper motions, optical colors, star-nonstar discriminators, and the appropriate uncertainties.
• 2MASS (Synthetic)
  A whole sky survey created using three photometric near-infrared bands to detect and characterize point sources brighter than about 1 milliJansky (mJy) in each band, with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 10, using a pixel size of 2.0".
• Tycho Synthetic
  The Tycho-2 catalog is based on a mix of 1991 space-based data from the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite, data from the Tycho 1 catalog, and over 140 astrometric catalogs. The catalog also included the re-analysis of positional data for the Tycho-1 stars and increased the number of stars in the catalog to 2.5 million.
• RASS X-Ray
  The ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS) was a survey of the sky released in March 2000 by the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. Its two objectives were to create the first all-sky survey with an imaging X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) telescope and a detailed study of selected X-ray and selected EUV sources.
• VLSS Radio
  The Very Large Array Low-Frequency Sky Survey (VLSS) is a 74 MHz (4-meter wavelength) continuum radio survey consisting of 358 continuum images covering the entire sky north of -30° declination.
• Можно смотреть картину звездного неба, двигаясь во времени, то есть, например, увидеть небо таким, каким его видели 2000 лет назад
• Ну можно конечно смотреть землю, в том числе карту и "street view"
• Можно смотреть все изображения с
• Spirit и Oportunity (Марс)
• Pathfinder
• Apollo 11-17 (луна)
• Можно смотреть землю ночью
• Можно создавать туры с аудио, аннотациями и некоторые уже опубликованы
• "Можно грабить корованы" :-)