Download Now: Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope Released

Microsoft has released its highly anticipated Worldwide Telescope software, which can be used by astronomers and non-astronomers alike to explore the heavens with a desktop client akin to Google Earth. Any Star Trek fan knows that space travel is not always easy, but Microsoft Corp wants to make traveling the "final frontier" as simple as turning on your computer. The world's largest software maker launched a free software application called WorldWide Telescope on Monday that allows everyone from space novices to astronomy professors to easily explore galaxies, star systems and distant planets. The WorldWide Telescope stitches together 12 terabytes -- the data equivalent of 2.6 billion pages of text -- of pictures from sources including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

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