Microsoft unveils its telescope application

WorldWide Telescope allows viewers to focus on a particular planet or cluster of stars.

[Markey]

Hopefully, it works better than Microsoft Streets & Trips, which apparently still can't find anything close to an accurate road map of my 40-year-old residential neighborhood. It would be scary to look for the sun on a clear day at noon and have Microsoft not be able to find it.

[Carlos uk]

Microsoft's new 'World Wide Telescope' application is actually pretty good.
Similar idea to the feature in Google Earth where you can turn round and look at the sky, except with added extras....
Images from different space telescopes, in different wavelengths, educational 'tours' etc....

As a keen amateur astronomer, I regularly use sky charting (planetarium) software.
To an experienced astronmer, WWT isn't as useful as, say,'StarryNight','Stellarium' ,'Cartes du Ciel', etc... but is a fantastic introduction to the night sky for a beginner, or someone with a casual interest.

[Carlos uk]

To add to the above.....

Beware though, it does require a fairly modern, powerful PC, with .Net framework 2 installed.

Nicrosoft claim requirements of minimum 1GB ram (2GB recommended), 2Ghz processor, 10Gb HD space (for cacheing of 'tours')

It will run though with a bit less ram (I've run it successfully on 3/4 GB ram) as long as the processor is up to the task.