This new application from Microsoft Research puts together various technologies they have been developing with their Live Labs and high-resolution pictures from numerous imaging satellites into a pretty cool experience.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way.

Download: Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Satellites, Telescope, WorldWide Telescope