Hey, look at this
April 1, 2010
Look up and see the stars
Bing Maps has a new application, the WorldWide Telescope, that enables us to look up at the sky at any time of day or night.
To get started, you'll need to go to www.bing.com/maps/explore. Before you do this, though, check that you've got the United State - English locale set. To do this, go to Bing Search at www.bing.com and look up at the top right of the browser window. If the locale is set to another country, such as Australia, click the country that's displayed to open a new page from which you can select the United States - English locale. Now you'll be able to load Bing Maps Explore.
At the bottom of the left-hand pane, you'll see Map Apps - click this to bring up a page of Bing Maps applications and choose WorldWide Telescope.
Now you're returned to your map and the left-hand pane enables you to control what you want to view in the sky.
Click the Start Here button to get things underway (notice the blue telescope icon denotes you're using the Bing Maps WWT app).
After a few seconds, the bottom half of the left-hand pane gives you more options as to what you want to view: Constellations, Solar system, All-sky surveys, objects photographed by Hubble, contributions from astrophotographers, and more. These options will be familiar to those of you who have used the downloadable or web client version of WorldWide Telescope.
Now click a location on the map area (click the telescope icon on the location; you can pan around the map and zoom the map in and out before clicking) from which you want to view the sky or enter a location in the search box at the top of the browser window.
The left-hand pane changes to inform you what's above you at this location and as well the large right-hand pane displays the position of objects in the sky above.
In sky view, you're able to zoom in and out and pan around the view. As you do, the information at the top of the left-hand pane will change correspondingly.
The current constellation is the yellow outline and the red lines in the view represent the main stars. The green line - when it appears - is the ecliptic, the apparent path of our sun against the background of the sky.
The sky view is dynamic, that is, it changes in real time, so don't be surprised when you've zoomed in on a planet to see it move across your screen.
At the bottom of the sky view pane, next to the date and time display, there's a small icon with a question mark - clicking this enables you to move around the screen and place the round marker over an object to obtain information about the underlying object. Just be patient since the information can take a few seconds to download and be displayed.
Whenever you select an object from those shown in the left-hand pane - note you might be able to scroll through a list of objects - there's the option to Fly in to view the object in more detail. It's a very handy feature and saves lots of zooming and panning. As well, just hovering your mouse over one of these objects will display a yellow circle to indicate its position in the current sky view (zoom out if you don't see the yellow location circle).
The above is enough information for you to start exploring the sky above (whether it be at day or night) at your location or any location around the world. Now it's possible for you to view objects in the sky as seen by those in the northern hemisphere. When you're ready to learn more about the sky, download and install the desktop version of WorldWide Telescope from www.worldwidetelescope.org. Oh, and you'll be able to do all the homework that Cass assigns at his observatory nights.
Tip: At the bottom left of the sky view is a box displaying year, date and time. These values are "live" so you can go back in time to when webDotWiz took his screenshots. Simply drag your mouse over the month and/or date value to view the sky on March 18 or March 21, 2010. Then drag the mouse over the time value to adjust the viewing time at the time webDotWiz snapped his screenshots. Naturally you can jump back and forward in time by years or even centuries if you want.
Look around and see
Note: webDotWiz Online's column of 29 April 2010, ICE + Photosynth = 3D Panoramas, has more step-by-step instructions of how to go about creating panoramas that are viewable in 3D on Photosynth.
Photosynth was updated the other day to enable us to view gigapixel panoramic photos.
A gigapixel panorama is very large. For example, the Mt St Helens panorama above is 1.1 gigapixels in size, that is, 1,100 million pixels in size. There are larger gigapixel panoramas at Photosynth, such as that taken of the Yosemite Glacier Park - it's over 10 gigapixels in size with a width of about 60,000 pixels and height of 3,000 pixels. To create these panoramas, photographers use a device such as the Gigapan Epic to manipulate their camera.
As well as an update to Photosynth, Microsoft updated their Image Composite Editor in order to stitch together large numbers of photos to create gigapixel panoramas and upload them to Photosynth.
Remember, though, you don't need to be creating gigapixel panoramas with Microsoft ICE. It's a handy tool when you have created a panorama that requires a different view, such as a 360 degree rotation. As well, ICE can stitch photos or scans that are in two dimensions, such as photographing or scanning a large poster or an old document.