worldwide telescope preview

the world wide telescope will come online in one year . . . . if you are like me and can't wait to see even a bit of what that will mean and what it will look like then you really should watch this talk excerpted from the TED Conference.
TED stands for technology, entertainment, design. it started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. visiting the TED site brings you into contact with over 200 talks by some of the smartest and coolest people on the planet who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

this is one such talk - it's subject is the worldwide telescope. here is how the wwt project is described on the official website:
"The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space telescopes to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft®’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience."

here's roy gould talking at TED about this amazing opportunity!