Deep Earth is a project created at the intersection of Microsoft Virtual Earth, Silverlight 2, and open source. Hosted on the Redmond company's open source repository CodePlex, version 1.0 of Deep Earth is available for download as of December 17, 2008. According to Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth tech evangelist Microsoft Live Search, Deep Earth is a marriage of Virtual Earth and Silverlight UX. The solution is designed to deliver an entirely new level of visualization when it comes down to both maps and geospatial data, courtesy of the DeepZoom capabilities brought to the table by Silverlight.

“DeepEarth is a mapping control powered by the combination of Microsoft’s Silverlight 2.0 platform and the DeepZoom (MuliScaleImage) control. At its core, it builds on these innovative technologies to provide an architecture for bringing together layers for services, data providers, and your own custom mapping elements together into an impressive user experience.”

“Also featured are in-depth examples of how you can leverage Virtual Earth Web Services to take advantage of advanced GIS service functionality. This is what you need to get an interactive, native Silverlight 2.0, map into your application today,” Pendleton stated.

Via CodePlex users are able to download the source code for the mapping platform under a Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). Initially just an image viewer, Deep Earth has grown since its introduction in June 2008 to the stage where it is now more than an experiment involving DeepZoom, and a fully-fledged mapping control.

“Here are some of the features: fully implemented map control with property and event model; fully templated set of map navigation controls; layers for inclusion of Points, LineStrings and Polygons (OGS); conversion library for Geography to Screen coordinated systems; Geocoding (find an address); Reverse Geocoding (getting an address from a point on the map); Routing (Directions); marque zoom selection (default Ctrl-click and drag or from menu toggle); and map rotation,” Pendleton added.

Deep Earth 1.0 is available for download here.

Silverlight 2 RTW (2.0.31005.0) is available for download here.