Undoubtedly by now you have heard of the WorldWide Telescope, a Microsoft Research project developed by Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay. WorldWide Telescope is based on the initial concept and work done by Jim Gray, the former researcher and manager of Microsoft Research's eScience Group. In fact, just because WorldWide Telescope was the brainchild of Jim Gray has made Microsoft researchers Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay dedicate the WorldWide Telescope to Gray. The project is accessible for the time being exclusively as a private alpha, with the company promising that it will become available come spring 2008.

This is what Gray envisioned for the project, in a whitepaper authored together with Alex Szalay, Johns Hopkins University, titled: "The World-Wide Telescope, an Archetype for Online Science" dating back to June 2002: "the WorldWide Telescope will have a democratizing effect on astronomy. Professional and amateur astronomers will have nearly equal access to the data. The major difference will be that some will have much better data analysis tools and skills than others. Often, following up on a conjecture requires a careful look at the object using an instrument like the Hubble -Space Telescope, so there will still be many projects for those with privileged access to those instruments. But, for studies that analyze the global structure of the universe, tools to mine the online data will be a wonderful telescope in their own right."

At the bottom of this article you will be able to find embedded a video demonstration of the WorldWide Telescope, via an interview featuring Robert Scoble PodTech Vice President of Media Development and Curtis Wong, Principal Researcher, Next Media Group Microsoft Research. As for the time being you are not be able to play around with the WorldWide telescope, the video will provide an insight into the project. And without a doubt, it is a project that is worth waiting for. Microsoft has so far failed to produce the actual date for the release of the WorldWide Telescope beyond pointing to this spring.

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