Worldwide Telescope
Wow, I started playing around with the latest build of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope and I finally turned the corner on it. Before, I had trouble doing anything. Now, the light bulb went off and I started using the guided tours, and that’s how I discovered how this thing is the next best thing to being in a planetarium. It’s like having all of the world’s astronomical data at your fingertips. I will admit, it’s not quite as cool as the 3D planetarium program that’s over at the California Academy of Sciences (I’d kill to have a desktop version of that; it’s just freaking unbelievable), but considering it’s free the Worldwide Telescope is a remarkable tool. My only real knit so far about WWT is that it has a 3D model of the solar system, but it fudges on the distances; if the Moon is three days travel from the Earth, then the Sun is about a month away based on this scale. I’d love to see a 3D model that has realistic scale.
If you’re fascinated by astronomy and astrophysics like I am, this is definitely something to check out.