Space travel from your local library

During my first visit to SRI International in 1980, scientists were excitedly showing off pictures radioed back from the Voyager spacecraft as it passed Jupiter. On my next visit, it was showing pictures of Saturn's rings. Getting such close ups of these other worlds was a stunning achievement for the scientists and their powerful computers which were able to translate the incoming signals into such beautiful images.

It would be great, of course, to be a passenger on the spacecraft but, with a journey time to Saturn of over three years, and no prospect of return, this was clearly impossible. Until now.

Microsoft, amazingly, was allowed to pimp its upcoming WorldWide Telescope product at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference this week. The conference is supposed to comprise 'Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers' so I cannot be alone in thinking that this was a rather tacky coup by Microsoft.

Still, the program allows its (XP or Vista) users to immerse themselves into the visible universe, panning and zooming to whatever nooks and crannies take their fancy. Never mind waiting three years to get a close up of Saturn, it's a matter of seconds now. Or it will be in the 'spring' when it officially launches. The software changes the way we view and absorb the nature of the universe.

The pictures, which are taken from a variety of earth- and space-based telescopes, are stitched together into a totally convincing three-dimensional space using Microsoft's Visual Experience Engine. Different light wavelengths can be selected and a mouse click brings up contextual information about the current view.

Microsoft says that the WorldWide Telescope will be available as 'a free resource to the astronomy and education communities', which is an interesting way of phrasing things. But, presuming that public libraries are part of the 'education communities' bit and presuming they have pretty large screens, they could make the experience far more realistic than the average PC display. Indeed, this sort of thing could act as the hub for space events with astronomers as guest participants.