Sunday, June 1, 2008

Star Struck

Microsoft has unveiled something for all of us stargazers, Microsoft Worldwide Telescope. This program is absolutely amazing! It uses images from multiple telescopes to give very detailed shots of objects in space. You can use it to view the earth or any of the other planets as well as distant stars and galaxies. You can create slide shows using the images you find and set them to music to share with friends or just spend your time surfing the universe. The images are clearer than any of the similar programs I have seen and is well worth checking out.
The one draw back to the program is the system requirements recommended to run it.
  • Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista® (recommended)
  • PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
  • 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
  • 3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
  • 1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
  • XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
  • Microsoft® DirectX® version 9.0c and .NET Framework 2.0
For a lot of geeks these specs are nothing, but for the average user this may be a bit much for your economy system. The download time is estimated at 10 minutes, though mine went a little faster, and the program is easy to use, even for the average user. If you are an amateur astronomy buff, or even a pro, I think you will really enjoy what this program has to offer.

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