WorldWide Telescope viewing a Hubble image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)
Original author(s)
Jonathan Fay, Curtis Wong
Developer(s)
Microsoft Research, .NET Foundation, American Astronomical Society
Initial release
February 27, 2008 (2008-02-27)
Stable release
6.1.2.0[1]
/ July 12, 2022; 22 months ago (2022-07-12)
Repository
github.com/WorldWideTelescope
Written in
C#[2]
Operating system
Microsoft Windows; web app version available
Platform
.NET Framework, Web platform
Available in
English, Chinese, Spanish, German, Russian, Hindi
Type
Visualization software
License
MIT License[3]
Website
worldwidetelescope.org
WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is an open-source set of applications, data and cloud services,[4][5] originally created by Microsoft Research but now an open source project hosted on GitHub.[6] The .NET Foundation holds the copyright and the project is managed by the American Astronomical Society and has been supported by grants from the Moore Foundation and National Science Foundation. WWT displays astronomical, earth and planetary data allowing visual navigation through the 3-dimensional (3D) Universe. Users are able to navigate the sky by panning and zooming, or explore the 3D universe from the surface of Earth to past the Cosmic microwave background (CMB), viewing both visual imagery and scientific data (academic papers, etc.) about that area and the objects in it. Data is curated from hundreds of different data sources, but its open data nature allows users to explore any third party data that conforms to a WWT supported format. With the rich source of multi-spectral all-sky images it is possible to view the sky in many wavelengths of light.[7] The software utilizes Microsoft's Visual Experience Engine technologies to function.[8] WWT can also be used to visualize arbitrary or abstract data sets and time series data.
WWT is completely free and currently comes in two versions: a native application that runs under Microsoft Windows[9] (this version can use the specialized capabilities of a computer graphics card to render up to a half million data points), and a web client based on HTML5 and WebGL.[10] The web client uses a responsive design which allows people to use it on smartphones and on desktops. The Windows desktop application is a high-performance system which scales from a desktop to large multi-channel full dome digital planetariums.[11]
The WWT project began in 2002, at Microsoft Research and Johns Hopkins University. Database researcher Jim Gray had developed a satellite Earth-images database (Terraserver) and wanted to apply a similar technique to organizing the many disparate astronomical databases of sky images.[12] WWT was announced at the TED Conference in Monterey, California in February 2008.[13] As of 2016, WWT has been downloaded by at least 10 million active users."[14]
As of February 2012 the earth science applications of WWT are showcased and supported by the Layerscape community collaboration website, also created by Microsoft Research. Since WWT has gone to Open Source Layerscape communities have been brought into the WWT application and re-branded simply "communities".
^"WWTExplorer 6.1.2.0". GitHub. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
^Scobleizer blog: What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope 2008-02-27. Retrieved 2016-08-23
^"AAS WorldWide Telescope".
^WWT Open Source overview
^"Welcoming the WorldWide Telescope to the Open Source .NET Universe". Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-12-03.
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