14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues to offer amazing content that users can leverage in order to personalize the desktops of PCs running Windows 7. A new themepack for the latest iteration of the Windows client is currently available for download free of charge, via the official source of customizations for the operating system, the Windows Personalization Gallery. The NASA Hidden Universe theme for Windows 7 promises to deliver “A universe filled with colors from NASA,” according to the short description of the theme.
What Windows 7 users will get by downloading and installing the theme is an excellent content package featuring a multitude of stunning images of the universe as captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The imagery offered in the NASA Hidden Universe theme is bound to be an absolute delight, and not just for space buffs, or users with a passion for astronomy.
In my view, Windows 7 themes, such as the NASA Hidden Universe, are lacking a bit of interactivity. I’ve said it already, and I’m just going to repeat it. I think that Windows 7 users would welcome a desktop background experience similar to the one offered through Silverlight for the wallpapers of the Bing search/decision engine home page. Or at least, Windows 7 gadgets delivered in concert with the themes, offering additional information on the personalization content offered through themes for the platform.
“The Spitzer Space Telescope consists of a 0.85-meter diameter telescope and three cryogenically-cooled science instruments which will perform imaging and spectroscopy in the 3 - 180 micron wavelength range. Since infrared is primarily heat radiation, detectors are most sensitive to infrared light when they are kept extremely cold. Using the latest in large-format detector arrays, Spitzer will be able to make observations that are more sensitive than any previous mission. While Spitzer's mission lifetime requirement remains 2.5 years, recent developments have brought a 5-year mission within reach. Spitzer launched on 25 August 2003,” reads an excerpt from NASA’s Spitzer Technology Overview.
The Windows 7 NASA Hidden Universe Theme is available for download here.
