REDMOND, Wash. — May 12, 2008

WorldWide Telescope Brings Space Exploration to Earth
The final frontier got a bit closer today as Microsoft Corp. officially launched the public beta of its WorldWide Telescope at www.worldwidetelescope.org. WorldWide Telescope is a rich Web application that brings together imagery from the best ground- and space-based observatories across the world to allow people to easily explore the night sky through their computers. WorldWide Telescope has been eagerly anticipated by the astronomical and educational communities as a compelling, astronomical resource for students and lifelong learners, and as a way to make science fun for children.

“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe,” said Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation. “By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe.”

The application itself is a blend of software and Web 2.0 services created with the Microsoft high performance Visual Experience Engine, which allows seamless panning and zooming around the heavens with rich image environments. Worldwide Telescope stitches together terabytes of high-resolution images of celestial bodies, and displays them in a way that relates to their actual position in the sky. People can freely browse through the solar system, galaxy and beyond, or take advantage of a growing number of guided tours of the sky hosted by astronomers and educators at major universities and planetariums.

Testimonials
John Seeley Brown - Scholar at the University of Southern California, former Chief Scientist at Xerox Corporation and Director of the Palo Alto Research Center
—“The sense of the universe was brought so much alive. I had forgotten that sense of awe. It had been years since I have experienced the awe that I experienced there.”

Robert Hurt - Astronomer, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, California Institute of Technology
—“The WorldWide Telescope is a great example of a piece of educational software that’s been designed intelligently from the ground up. And it is the most impressive one I’ve seen to date to handle the visualization of the sky in a very interactive, smooth, clean interface.”

Lucy Fortson - Vice President for Research, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago, and Senior Research Associate, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago
— WorldWide Telescope “has the possibility of being transformative in the way we educate people and get them to become familiar with and excited about astronomy.”

Alyssa Goodman - Professor of Astronomy, Director of the Initiative in Innovative Computing, Harvard University
—“WorldWide Telescope has enough capability that even professional astronomers and astrophysicists are eager to use it, not just as a mechanism for public outreach, but for our own work.”

For more information:
Contact : juliew@waggeneredstrom.com