Any Star Trek fan knows that space travel is not always easy, but Microsoft wants to make travelling the 鈥渇inal frontier鈥� as simple as turning on your computer.
The world鈥檚 largest software maker launched a free software application called WorldWide Telescope on Monday that allows everyone from space novices to astronomy professors easily explore galaxies, star systems and distant planets.
The WorldWide Telescope stitches together 12 terabytes 鈥� the data equivalent of 2.6 billion pages of text 鈥� of pictures from sources including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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The experience is similar to playing a video game, allowing users to zoom in and out of galaxies that are thousands of light years away. It allows seamless viewing of far-away star systems and rarely-seen space dust in breathtaking clarity.
A test version of the software is available for download .
Microsoft archrival Google also has its eyes to the skies. Google Sky started as an add-on to Google Earth but was later upgraded to a version that could be used through a Web browser. Google鈥檚 version is also free.
Science careers
Microsoft said it will release the WorldWide Telescope free of charge as a tribute to Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who went missing off the coast of California while sailing in 2007. Gray worked with astronomers to organise the vast amounts of data and images being pulled from spacecraft.
Microsoft expects the technology used in the WorldWide Telescope to help the company in future software applications, but the program鈥檚 goal is to spark children鈥檚 interest in space and encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering.
鈥淢y idea of success is if WorldWide Telescope changes how people see the universe and for a generation of kids to have a degree of knowledge about space that they are just not getting now,鈥� said Curtis Wong, manager of Microsoft鈥檚 Next Media Research Group.
鈥淐ontextualising astronomy is missing right now. You see all of these Hubble images and they鈥檙e amazing, but you have no idea about how big they are, how far away it is.鈥�
The software allows users to develop their own guided tours of the universe to share with others or take part a guided tour created by astronomy experts.
