WorldWide Telescope

What WorldWide Telescope is

WorldWide Telescope is free, open-source software for visualizing and sharing scientific data and stories from telescopes, observatories, and institutions. It lets students, researchers, museums, planetariums, and scholarly publications explore the sky across different wavelengths, inspect telescope imagery, follow guided tours, and view the Solar System in 3D. The browser client runs without a download, although the project recommends a strong internet connection. A Windows client supports Windows 7 through 11; the listed stable release is version 6.1.2.0, dated July 12, 2022. Researchers can use the rendering engine inside Jupyter through pywwt. Developers can embed WWT in webpages, create custom applications with its WebGL engine, or use the Layer Control API to load data into the Windows application. Windows also supports planetarium installations ranging from single-projector domes to multi-server, multi-channel systems with warping and blending. The project provides telescope control, mission tracking, and learning content. Software and data sets are released under the MIT License.