

The public beta of Worldwide telescope is now available at and get empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.

  • follow a guided tour of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country.
  • enjoy seamless panning and zooming (use the + - keys) around the night sky, planets, and image environments.


Note that the WWT requires DirectX 9.0c even when you already have DirectX 10 installed on my Vista box. The reason is that DirectX has a subcomponent (D3DX) that gets revved more often than DX itself. So, when people ask for DX 9.0c, they really mean DX 9.0c and D3DX rev 35 (for example). That's why you keep seeing the DX installer over and over again when you install a new DX app.

Now that the revving of D3DX has slowed down, these installers should be further and fewer apart (you roughly get one install per rev of D3DX).