The Worldwide Telescope

This is a pretty awesome piece of technology from Microsoft Research.

Giving credit where credit is due, Microsoft said the WorldWide Telescope builds on work that started with computer scientist Jim Gray's work on SkyServer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The new program has been dedicated to Gray's memory. Here's a short article by Gray and Alexander Szalay that lays out the philosophy behind the project. Curtis Wong of Microsoft Research's Next Media group plays a lead role in the WorldWide Telescope project and conducted today's demonstration at TED.