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Microsoft Launches WorldWide Telescope
From the world of competitive astronomical websites (isn’t the Internet grand?) comes this new offering from Microsoft, WorldWide Telescope. Like others before it Microsoft’s new offering allows users to explore planets and other celestial objects. You can also view/track objects from any place on earth and in any point in time. Of course as you might expect from Microsoft there’s more going on than that. There is a lot of imagery from NASA including the Mars rovers, Hubble telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. There are also ‘tours’ set up by expert astronomers or you can even save your own ‘5 year missions’.
Like with Google’s ‘The Sky’ or the open source Stellarium users must first download the free WorldWide Telescope software from Microsoft (windows only).
WorldWide Telescope (via BBC News)
Interactive 360 Degree Panoramas
Interactive Panoramas (or VR Photography) is a relatively new media that creates a panoramic view that immerse the viewer ‘inside’ the image. This is far far more advanced than the kinds of panoramas you can make with your digital camera and stitching software. Using your mouse you can view from side to side or top to bottom and all points in between of some fantastic imagery taking by Interactive Panorama photographers from all over the world and collected and displayed by Hans Nyberg a commercial photographer in Denmark.
There are over 400 stunning interaftive images of every thing from the Oslo Opera House to Death Valley, from the Oscars to Carnival In Rio. A truly stunning collection in a format that’s as close as you can get to being there from your PC.
The Museum of Ancient Inventions
As part of their coursework students at the Smith College History of Science have replicated many of the coolest ancient inventions and set up a virtual museum so that you can learn all about them. The museum’s web page seems to have gone stagnant since 2001 but nonetheless there is a lot of good information and quite honestly in the realm of ancient history what’s another 7 years?
Although scientists don’t always agree on the more spectacular such as the ‘Baghdad battery’ nonetheless it’s interesting to see that not everyone was just sitting around waiting for the Industrial Age.
