Caltech Helps Open the Universe in WorldWide Telescope

Panoramic images of the sky obtained at Palomar Observatory and by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), plus pointed observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope, form a significant part of Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope (WWT).

The WWT combines cosmic imagery and educational content from many sources, including major ground-based sky surveys. Images of the northern sky used in the WWT are based on the second major photographic Palomar Sky Survey (POSS-II), conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A digital version of this survey was produced in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and processed and calibrated at Caltech. Additional images for the WWT were provided by the currently ongoing Palomar-Quest digital sky survey. All of the images were processed at Caltech’s Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR).

> Read more in the Caltech Press Release.