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The University of Dodoma: Project: World Wide Telescope
The University of Dodoma: Project: World Wide Telescope
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The brief history of World Wide Telescope (WWT)
A World Wide Telescope (WWT) is an open source set of applications, data and cloud
services, originally created by Microsoft Research but now an open source project hosted on
GitHub. WWT displays astronomical, earth and planetary data allowing visual navigation
through the 3-dimensional (3D) Universe. Users are able to navigate the sky by panning and
zooming, or explore the 3D universe from the surface of Earth to past the Cosmic microwave
background (CMB), viewing both visual imagery and scientific data (academic papers, etc.)
about that area and the objects in it.
The WWT project began in 2002, at Microsoft Research and Johns Hopkins University.
Database researcher Jim Gray had developed a satellite Earth-images database (TerraServer)
and wanted to apply a similar technique to organizing the many disparate astronomical databases
of sky images. WWT was announced at the TED Conference in Monterey, California in
February 2008. As of 2016, WWT has been downloaded by at least 10 million active users.
The World Wide Telescope interface after being launched for the first time
1) a native application that runs under Microsoft Windows (this version can use the
specialized capabilities of a computer graphics card to render up to a half million data
points)
2) and a web client based on HTML5 and WebGL. The web client uses a responsive design
which allows people to use it on smartphones and on desktops. The Windows desktop
application is a high-performance system which scales from a desktop to large multi-
channel full dome digital planetariums.
Example: WorldWide Telescope 5.5 is the latest version of WorldWide Telescope (WWT).
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WWT 5.5 runs on Windows 7/8/8.1/10, in either 32- or 64-bit mode, depending on your
operating system. It also supports native DirectX 11, DirectX 10, and has some support for
down-level DirectX 9 hardware running through the DirectX 11 API.
The .NET Foundation holds the copyright and the project is managed by the American
Astronomical Society and has been supported by grants from the Moore Foundation and
National Science Foundation.
Support for WorldWide Telescope is provided through our discussion forums forums.
worldwidetelescope.org To get troubleshooting help, ask general questions, or make suggestions,
please post there.
BUG REPORT: To report a bug, anyone can use the following ways or methods:
Feedback or further questions: Please feel free to email questions or comments to us, or send
us a Facebook message, or tweet to @WWTelescope
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GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
Developers
1) Jonathan Fay, Lead Architect
2) Ron Gilchrist, Web Developer
Setting Language in WorldWide Telescope: You can change your language setting in
WorldWide Telescope by clicking the down arrow below the Settings menu entry. Select Your
Language... changes the language of the UI.
WWT Website uses Bing Translator: Bing Translator translates text and web pages into
different languages, powered by the Microsoft Translator machine translation platform and web
service. Machine translation is not a replacement for human translation but can be a great
solution when resources or budget do not allow for human translation.
WWT can be used by any person who want to navigate, learn, explore and doing research, but
the user can be categorized
1) Tour Making
2) For Explorers
3) Adding Data
4) For Researchers
5) For Museums
6) For Planetariums
CONCLUSION
A World Wide Telescope (WWT) is a visualization environment that brings together imagery
from the world's best ground and space-based telescope. The purpose of the American
Astronomical Society's World Wide Telescope project is to enable the seamless visualization and
sharing of scientific data and stories from major telescopes, observatories, and institutions among
students and researchers, through science museums and full-dome immersive planetariums, and
in scholarly publications.