Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope Released

I do amateur astronomy. Not anything serious. Just with stuff I picked up at the Dow planetarium when I lived near Montreal. I used to go there once every 2 months or so.

So I was expecting this and Google’s service to actually let you point a super powerful spectrum CCD capturing telescope that only scientists get to operate and only with a long waiting queue.

All in real time. ( some how some way )

This is ok, but it’s not half as good as a $100 telescope.

Windows? What is that?

http://ascom-standards.org/Dow.....rivers.htm

I guess it’s compatible with servo driven telescopes with ASCOM, but still.
That’s not much better than having a cheaper manual one and aligning it with the coordinates.

It would have been cool to have shared control of some really big one on a mountain. My telescope didn’t have a servo, nor do any sold at the Montreal planetarium so this wouldn’t work for me.

What’s the point of saying “windows only ?”

Is there something else ?

I agree with Simon, what da hell?
Like apple makes their “iphoto, garageband” and other software available for windows.
I hate how people hate Microsoft so much.. i dont get it.

Back to the subject:-

Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope has crashed on me, I keep getting an error and I can no proceed.

Windows is not my cup of tea.

It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It would be better as an online app where people can share access to their telescopes. People with better telescopes could even sell time on their machines via a web interface. A virtual space marketplace.
I would pay for something like that and so would a lot of people.

I bet Google will get this right. Microsoft always comes out with it first, and then Google always comes out with it after but gets it right.

The guided tours are nice though(REALLY NICE). Again it would be better as a web app with more user interaction as a social network where people could share their own telescope access, and space media.

I bet Google will nail this.

When I write people with better telescopes, I of course mean people that have good telescopes with the servo system and the drivers and the right CCD. They could sell time on their equipment via the internet or at least share it with some new Google service.

Good thing they made sure they included every ethnicity in the “kids reaction” video. I was about to sue.

I’m digging that the site is built in Flash (not Silverlight)

of course you need windows… how else do you see outside?

Microsoft will never learn it…

Under download for Mac: ‘Minimum Windows XP SP2 or higher…with BootCamp”

Guys a Mac box running Windows IS NOT A MAC, it’s like a beautiful woman wearing a sack and led boots….

Anyhow, they don’t seem to get it that clinging to their old lady OS doesn’t fly anymore. No I am off to Pattric Moore’s The Sky At Night on the BBC site

Peter

Do you follow me on http://twitter.com/peterurban

Product doesn’t interest me at all, but it’s interesting how the site is made using Adobe Flash and not Silverlight.

Now is the time to capture Scoble’s precious tears.

With how easy he cries over these things, it’s the power source of the future.

@14, Scoble’s tears is one of the key ingredients in the potion that opens the 7 gates of hell. I think baby fat is another.

I’m kinda disappointed. I was hoping that this would be an interactive star map (it is) that gives people access to the best subset of the available photos of cellestial objects (it doesn’t). Unless I’m missing something, even looking at something as close a planet or the Andromeda Galaxy only gives you one optical view of it. You should be able to do something like photosynth for looking as all sides of rotating objects (like planets), or for zooming into close-ups of big/close celestial objects.

It looks like they have the UI setup to support multiple photos, so maybe it will come later. The ability to switch between all the imagery sources is very cool though!

Good thing it’s not Silverlight based .. though .Net requirement still pretty much kills it. A dependency like this one (or a comparably ungodly Java dependency) is a pretty big adoption obstacle. They are losing tons of potential users over this … not that they care since they are non-commercial, but still …

I do amateur astrophotograpy. I’ve been playing with this software a bit. The ASCOM logo and Telescope option seems to indicate that you can connect your own telescope, and control it from there, as you would with other desktop apps such as TheSky or StarryNight.

Overall, it looks nice. Of course I’m missing many “advanced” options, and I’m sure it’s not going to replace any time soon the software I’m already using, but the community aspect does sound interesting. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a way to create a community, only to join the existing ones. Not good.

I read TC daily and never post. I can’t believe the people who are nit picking this. While these projects get exposure for MSFT and could possibly lead to further work with some universities, they’re undertaken to move technology forward for the sake of it. Photosynth could have been used [and still may be] for hundreds of lame commercial apps, but they threw its weight into space first. Last I checked Mars isn’t competing against Dominos to advertise virtual billboards strewn throughout space. If this were available when I was in school, I would have enjoyed astronomy much more. I had to memorize and draw out all the constellations and their stars on paper (only 10 years ago).

I quote Chris…

“So I was expecting this and Google’s service to actually let you point a super powerful spectrum CCD capturing telescope that only scientists get to operate and only with a long waiting queue.

All in real time. ( some how some way )

This is ok, but it’s not half as good as a $100 telescope.”

My snarky reply…

I don’t think there are too many ’super powerful’ telescopes out there for free use. Last I heard they were pretty expensive to operate and were trying to do actual research… which, gasp, some might consider more important than your perusal of the night sky.

I happen to own a $100 telescope… it didn’t come with guided tours.

“Windows Only”? Uh, it works on Macs too. It says so right on the download page.

If you don’t have Windows, too bad. You chose your system, and you can accept that by not bothering to post a comment about the latest software not working for your OS.

@Daniel & Robin Blandford : Only because Flash is still more widely used than Silverlight. Silverlight’s better, but I’m guessing MS doesn’t want to push people into that (such as Alex P here) to make them look like meanies.

@Chris : Google isn’t always the best. Like Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth. Technically (and maybe even visually), VE happens to be a better platform. And Live Image and Video search happens to be light years ahead of what Google’s doing. I guess you could say that Google is going to “copy” what Microsoft has already accomplished. It should be noted that WWT is in it’s spring BETA right now. So don’t expect the great performance or anything. What it does have now is pretty good.

I don’t know why people always will try to find something to criticize about MS, but I think WWT is pretty darn cool. If anyone else did this, it would be claimed innovative. Just like what WWT is.

This is the thing that made me cry. I can’t post URLs here on TechCrunch for some reason, so if you click my name you’ll get the video we made at FastCompany.tv of the two guys who developed this.

@Robert Scoble:

what URL do you enter?

in the hollywood hills we only use telescopes to see into our neighbors houses. let me know when someone comes out with that one.

Hi I am a mac
And I am a PC

Mac: What are you doing Pc?
PC: Using telescope

Mac: but I am young and cool.
Pc: you also have 3 STDs and are shallow cause you’re a shallow pop culture wh*re.

Yay flavor of the month!

What is al the fuss about? Quite a few organisations have been making robotic telescopes available to schools and astronomy societies for quite some time. (google school observatory robotic telescope).

Some of these are ’scopes on the other side of the world (so you can look at the sky during your daytime) and in good locations eg Las Palmas…

Try Google Sky
http://www.google.com/sky/

Works well on Ubuntu…

don’t you love it?

“I hate how people hate Microsoft so much.. i dont get it.”

then, in the SAME post:

“Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope has crashed on me, I keep getting an error and I can no proceed.”

hmmm…

@Quikboy - You say “I’m guessing MS doesn’t want to push people into [Silverlight] [...] to make them look like meanies.”

What!?

Thought it interesting you run a dedicated site called “Microsoft & The Future” “I mainly write about things that I think Microsoft could improve and enhance. My main topics are usually about MSN/Windows Live, Zune, and I dabble with other Microsoft stuff. I hope you like my blog.”

lol.

why not try microsoft wordwide telescope.

It’s good to be technical telescope in the hands of everyone is better to be monopolizing
At least litres compete better in this area
دردشة

Will we eventually be able to connect directly to satellites and see ourselves from the sky in real time?

@19

“I don’t think there are too many ’super powerful’ telescopes out there for free use. ”

I hate to tell you this, but Bill Gates and Microsoft are super rich. They could buy a mountain, carve a hole into it, and put 100 high power telescopes all around the circumference for people to share online for trivial non-research and it wouldn’t effect their bottom line at all.

So could Google.

If this made Robert cry, then Robert hasn’t been to an observatory or planetarium in years. Nor has he so much as looked through an actual telescope. The rest of us probably hit the planetarium or observatory at least once a year. Heck you have to go if you go to school at some point in your life.

So all in all, I stick with my original comment.

The pro tours are nice, but ultimately the internet is about user generated content.

When Google does theirs it should be

A. Online

B. It should allow people to share their telescopes with ASCOM or other drivers in real time online and allow for virtual telescope time sharing. That way if you can’t build 10000 telescopes for people to use, at least they can share their own through the web.

C. It should be WAY more community focused. Like MySpace but with telescope devices attached. It should also notify via SMS and email of events through the website.

If a telescope is scanning for X event through a set of x,y,z to x2,y2,z2 coordinates, Google software should be able to automatically detect whatever it was looking for and send out email alerts. That way your telescope can be on autopilot until X event is found.

It should do this all through the web.
It should be community driven.

Never touch anything coming from M$
Never trust them
Never digg them

Microsoft’s WWT compared to Google Sky is way better. I just downloaded WWT and it’s awesome (even if it’s just for Windows right now). I did a few of the guided tours made by others and it’s like sitting and think that’s one of the WWT’s best features besides the sleek design of WWT and tons of features. Google Sky is ok and it’s only good feature is that it’s web based. I think people like Chris fail to understand what WWT is for. Also, Chris, Google has an astronomy product out! It’s called Google Sky so go complain about that now.

I agree with Chris. Although this is a first public release BETA, it should be perfect in every aspect. It should also include a real-time super duper telescope capable of allowing millions of users to log-in via the web to use it simultaneously. For free.

@32: WWT is online. Where do you think the pictures come from? I don’t have terabytes of astronomy photos sitting on my harddrive.
I see you haven’t checked out the Community tab in WWT. MS has already beaten you and Google to the punch.
You can already control telescopes in ASCOM using WWT. You can use .Net to extend WWT’s functionality, so you can easily code your own remote telescoping feature.

@7: You mean like how it took Google 3 years to get simple POP3 functionality into Gmail? How it can’t manage basic security that even AOL has in place to stop mass spammers? Or how it had to buy Google Sky? and Google Earth? and Writely? and Jotspot? And…(long story short: everything “innovative” at Google is something they bought, except for the search engine itself)