Microsoft Worldwide Telescope just launched: Is this better than Google Earth add-on Sky?

If you love galaxies, exploding stars, exotic nebulae and basically anything to do with astronomy then you will really love the newly launched Microsoft Worldwide Telescope. The new WorldWide Telescope from Microsoft is a free tool that puts together images from the best ground and space based telescopes in the world and collections include pictures from the awesome and well known Hubble and Spitzer telescopes oh and of course the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

All this and so much more is just a click on the mouse away for all you amateur astronomers, the tool which is web based and allows you the user to zoom and pan around the planets and even trace their locations in the night sky. There are some pretty cool things you can do such as see the X-ray view of the sky, cross-fade into the visible light view and zoom into bright radiation clouds plus you can even discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago.

If you want to use the system just click the link below, to use this all new system you will need to download WorldWide Telescope from the internet and just so you all know it only runs on Windows operating systems. WorldWide Telescope is a great tool for educational purposes which will indeed inspire young people. The new WorldWide Telescope from Microsoft is not the only a tool for astronomers to explore the night sky from their computers, do you remember when Google who are Microsoft’s rivals launching their very own Google Sky which is an add-on to Google Earth.

Microsoft Worldwide Telescope system requirements are as follows – 2GHz or faster processor, 2GB of RAM, 1-10GB of free disk space, Graphics card with 128 MB RAM or 256 VRAM, Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, Net connection and Macs must run Windows OS.

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