The Mendicant Bug

Rumors are brewing that Microsoft is going to announce the release of a new product called Worldwide Telescope later this month. WT should allow users to zoom in on parts of the sky for which data exists. Data will be drawn from a number of ground-based telescopes as well as Hubble. Google Sky does this already in a nauseatingly ugly way. It’s bad. Epic fail there. Stellarium, on the other hand, is an open source star charting program that blows Google Sky away. I’ve been using it for a few years now and have been very happy with it. From the sound of the TechCrunch article, though, Worldwide Telescope could blow Stellarium away. I really hope so. And if it’s free, I’ll be forced to give Microsoft props for doing something right for a change.