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It's the Astronomy Online non-Blog, or un-Blog.
Everyone has a blog now and since I am no follower of trends, I decided to merge the blog with the website. And I don't want to neglect the website in favor of posting on the blog.
These are the pages that were on the blog of old:
- Home
- Archive (Index of Pages)
- Me
- Current Trends
- Links
- Soho Live
Links:
Google Maps - Mars
Google Maps - Moon
HiRISE
HiRISE - MRO Imaging
Mac Singularity
Meade4M
Slackerpedia Galactica
Software for the Mac
Starry Night Online
Venus Maps
More Favorites:
Thank you for visiting!
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World Wide Telescope - Windows Only:
To me, the World Wide Telescope (WWT) was one of the most anticipated programs to be released in a long time. Here was software that laid out all available scientific surveys using a typical planetarium software platform, and switching views is a simple as the press of a button.
- No more using SIMBAD selecting a target.
- No more searches in MAST, VLA or some obscure server to find the correct image.
- No more downloading the wrong plate.
- No more scaling the multiple wavelength images for overlay.
I go to download my copy and, oops - PC only. I switched to a Mac over a year ago and use Windows software in Parallels (Windows XP) which is a virtualization program. WWT will only run on native Windows - that is if you run Windows using Boot Camp - which I don't.
I tried out the WWT on a friend's PC and really liked the program. I can see students using this program for a variety of projects and surveys. I already had a brief plan to perform a survey of galaxy clusters and their corresponding X-ray signature, which is possible with the WWT.
However, I cannot use the program - and I am not alone (just Google "World Wide Telescope for OS X").
I just simply cannot fathom the Microsoft's Research department's choice in making this a PC only program. Professional astronomers use a Linux program (which also runs on OS X) called IRAF for image processing, and (at least when I was going through school) Macs are popular with students.
This is not some money-maker, PC versus Mac type software. This is essential software that should be made available on as many platforms as possible.
Microsoft take note...
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