Microsoft Software Gives Free Tours of Space

SEATTLE (Reuters)- Any Star Trek fan knows that space travel is not always easy, butMicrosoft Corp wants to make traveling the "final frontier" as simpleas turning on your computer.

The world’s largest software maker launched a free softwareapplication called WorldWide Telescope on Monday that allows everyonefrom space novices to astronomy professors to easily explore galaxies,star systems and distant planets.

The WorldWide Telescope stitches together 12 terabytes — the dataequivalent of 2.6 billion pages of text — of pictures from sourcesincluding the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray ObservatoryCenter and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The experience is similar to playing a video game, allowing users tozoom in and out of galaxies that are thousands of light years away. Itallows seamless viewing of far-away star systems and rarely-seen spacedust in breathtaking clarity.

A test version of the software is available for download at www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Microsoft archrival Google Inc also has its eyes to the skies.Google Sky started as an extension of space data and images into GoogleEarth before eventually unveiling a version that can be used through aWeb browser.

Google’s version is also free.

Microsoft said it will release the WorldWide Telescope free ofcharge as a tribute to Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who wentmissing off the coast of California while sailing last year. Grayworked on projects with astronomers to organize the vast amounts ofdata and images being pulled from satellites.

Microsoft expects the technology used in the WorldWide Telescope tohelp the company in future software applications, but the goal for thisprogram is to spark the interest of children to want to learn moreabout space and possibly pursue careers in science and engineering.

"My idea of success is if WorldWide Telescope changes how people seethe universe and for a generation of kids to have a degree of knowledgeabout space that they are just not getting now," said Curtis Wong,manager of Microsoft’s Next Media Research Group.

"Contextualizing astronomy is missing right now. You see all ofthese Hubble images and they’re amazing, but you have no idea about howbig they are, how far away it is."

The software allows users to develop their own guided tours of theuniverse to share with others or take part a guided tour created byastronomy experts.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill)