WorldWide Telescope (WWT)

[Art Blade]

World Wide Telescope (WWT)

There is a downloadable version (more powerful) and a web frontend available.

Experience WorldWide Telescope
Immerse yourself in a seamless beautiful environment.
WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.
A web-based version of WorldWide Telescope is also now available. This version enables seamless, guided explorations of the universe from within a web browser on PC and Intel Mac OS X by using the power of Microsoft Silverlight 3.0.

WorldWide Telescope Provides Detailed Mars Exploration and Enhanced Night Sky Image
Now you can use WorldWide Telescope (WWT) to explore the features of Mars as never before, thanks to the addition of more than 13,000 incredibly detailed images of Mars from various NASA spacecraft. Zoom in on the Red Planet and experience the Martian surface in unbelievably lifelike 3-D rendering, and learn more about our planetary neighbor with new interactive guided tours of Mars. And the enhancements to WWT don't stop there. Now the WWT view of the night sky is even more amazing, with a seamless, high-resolution representation that smooths out the contours between discrete images. Gone are the visible "tiles" – those sharp edges where individual telescopic photos were combined to create the night sky panorama. This enhanced view, called the Terapixel sky image, provides an extraordinary sensation of panning the sky with the world's most powerful telescope.

[fragger]

Wow! Great find, Art, that's fantastic :-X :-X :-X

[Art Blade]

Thanks, mate  :)
When I created this topic I had you in mind and hoped that you didn't know about WWT  ;D

I hope more people interested in this kind of stuff will like it, too.

[mandru]

It does look interesting.  I'll need to check it out.

[PZ]

This is really cool!  Thanks for posting  :-X

[Art Blade]

glad you guys like it :)

[mandru]

Just as a point of interest since this thread is about a computer dwelling Telescope.  Maybe this will get a few of you away from the computer and outside for a few minutes.  ;)

August 12 or 13 2010 depending on your location there will be a triple conjunction of Venus, Mars and Saturn which will be accompanied by a crescent moon in the West visible right after sunset.

[Art Blade]

I think I saw something like that.. I believe it was in the movie "pitch black" when all planets lined up and plop.. lights out, beasts in.  ;D

[mandru]

Cool!   :-X

I'd hate for the world to up and end in a way where I don't get any target practice.  8)

[Art Blade]

haha ;D Just had to edit "move" into "movie" (of course, I always edit my posts.. maybe I'll use that "preview" some time soon  ???? .. ah, no, I won't  :-D )

[fragger]

Thanks for the conjunction heads-up, mandru :-X

[mandru]

 :-D  :-X