Tour outer space with MS Telescope

Microsoft has finally one-upped Google. While Google last year introduced the impressive desktop Google Sky software, the Redmond software maker thinks its WorldWide Telescope goes forth more boldly to the known edges of the universe.

WorldWide Telescope is a virtual observatory of space and is free to download from Microsoft. Warning: it doesn’t work well on older PCs and is not yet available for Macs. It’s found at www. worldwidetelescope.org.

It allows either guided tours — for example, Center of the Milky Way, Dust and Us. Or users can create their own tours of the universe.

It works by stitching together 12 terabytes of data and splendid sky images from the world’s finest telescopes — the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, Spitzer Space Telescope and more.

By using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth program, you can zoom outside and then look back at Earth and enjoy the view as seen from any vantage point.

Another feature in WorldWide Telescope is linking one’s own telescope to WorldWide Telescope to track what you are gazing at. You’ll have to install a software platform called ASCOM (Astronomy Common Object Model) and a driver for the telescope.

The variety of ways to look or observe celestial phenomena is wide-ranging. One can choose to view the sky through only X-ray spectra or through visible light. One can change observation time to a date and time in the future or one in the past.

The minimum hardware for WorldWide Telescope is a 2 GHz processor, one gigabyte of RAM and a 128mb 3-D graphics card.

A good online overview of how the software works is in a recent issue of Astronomy magazine. Check out the magazine’s set of stories at www.astronomy.com.