In order to view the new content in WWT, viewers will need to download the new WWT|Mars experience.

However, using WWT isn’t the only way to access the imagery. Thanks to Bing Maps’ application gallery, the Bing WorldWide Telescope Map App has been updated to include the Mars additions. Web surfers can immediately view the content using their browser via the Silverlight site.

To use this feature, click the “Maps Apps” button then the “WorldWide Telescope” map app. When it loads, choose “Mars” from the list of collections.

In the demo, a presenter pinches Jupiter to rotate the planet, pinches to expand and contract a galaxy and more.

The project also supports voice commands to navigate from one celestial body to the next.

For those interested in learning more about the research, there’s a whitepaper available here.

(via the ISV Developer Community)

To use it, you can either click on a map’s location to see what stars would be overhead in that area or (and possibly even cooler than that), you can just look up when in Streetside mode, the Bing Maps view which shows real-world curbside photos of an area.

To launch the map app in order to begin exploring the universe from within Bing Maps, do the following (via the Bing Team blog post):

1. Launch the WWT Bing Maps app
2. Click the “Start Here” button which enables a telescope mouse pointer which you drag somewhere onto the map.
3. Once you drop it on the map the map will fade to the constellations and stars overhead. You can navigate the universe the same way you do Bing Maps by grabbing an area and dragging the map around (now a universe map).
4. Click the question mark icon near the bottom of the map. This enables a control that you can drag over specific entities on the universe map to identify what they are. To turn off the information view, just click the question mark icon again

You may remember hearing about WorldWide Telescope (WWT) when it launched back in May 2008 thanks to a little hype from Robert Scoble, but since that time the once Windows-only desktop software has been updated with new features, went 3D, was integrated into Virtual Earth, and finally came to the web for everyone to use thanks to Silverlight technology.

Photosynth has also seen a number of improvements since its launch in March of this year. It was integrated into Virtual Earth, Live Maps, and Windows Live Photo Gallery, arrived on the iPhone and Facebook, and someone even figured out how to navigate synths using gestures. Cool! If you haven’t tried out Photosynth yourself just yet, you can learn how to do it here.

The new WWT web application (alpha) uses Silverlight 2.0 to display the satellite imagery within your browser and it offers most of the features of the desktop application, including the following:

• Access to hundreds of terabytes of sky, earth and planet data
• Ability to navigate seamlessly through 3D spherical environments
• Finder Scope to quickly identify astronomical objects
• Instant thumbnail previews of tens of thousands of popular astronomical objects
• Access to billions of objects in web-based astronomical catalogue
• Loading tours, images and other WorldWide Telescope data files on local machine
• Real-time positions of planets and moons
• Move forwards and backwards in time 2000 years
• View guided tours (without 3D planets)
• Browsing local user collections
• Virtual Observatory Cone search/registry look up and SIMBAD search

This new version of WWT, dubbed the “Equinox Release,” was unveiled at PDC where it was demonstrated to the crowd. However, you can’t truly grasp the power and marvel of this software until you try it for yourself…especially now that it has gone 3D!

In the Equinox edition of WWT, you can explore our solar system in 3D. That means you can float through the rings of Saturn, spin around the moons of Jupiter, watch the shadows the moon casts on the Earth during an eclipse, and even see just how far we are from the center of the Milky Way.

You can record tours of this 3D Solar System, too, using WWT’s feature which lets you author guided looks at parts of the universe using voiceovers, slides, text, and images. The difference is that now, those tours can be animated. Text and inserted images can spin, expand, contract, fade, move, etc. within a slide. Want to see an example?  Try this Apollo tour created by Dinoj Surendran, a Data Curator at WWT.

Also, thanks to the 2008 Phoenix Lander mission, there are more panoramas of Mars now. You’ll find those combined with the Cornell Pancams on the NASA/JPL Spirit and Opportunity Rovers and the Pathfinder missions. Some are also in 3D.

In addition to Mars, there is new data that includes hundreds of new images from the Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer space telescopes, as well as from renowned astrophotographer Jack Newton. There are also new surveys in the ultraviolet (GALEX) and gamma-ray (Fermi) domain, an updated set of sixteen surveys about the Cosmic Microwave Background from the WMAP Science Team, and panoramas stitched at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Ames Center from the original Apollo astronauts’ photographs. And if that’s not enough data for you, you can upload your own using some of the WWT’s provided utilities.

The update also includes some bug fixes and features for power users (like cone searching with NED (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database) returning results as VOTables, textures on Saturnian and Uranian moons,  Earth globes where you can see polar regions,  panoramas of telescopes at Mauna Kea). But there are some features for casual users like myself, too. These include a full-screen mode that I can enter and leave using F11 and the ability to save the screen I’m viewing as Desktop Wallpaper (sweet!).

You can download the WWT from here.

Here's how to do this:

1. Install the ASCOM Platform software.
2. In WWT, click the top of the Telescope tab.
3. In the right corner, click the ASCOM logo to open a browser with the ASCOM Web site.
4. On the ASCOM page, click the text link to the downloads page.
5. On the ASCOM Download Library page, click the text link for the latest ASCOM Platform software, and then click Run when the File Download and WorldWide Telescope Explorer dialog boxes display. After you click the ASCOM Platform software download link, you may need to close the browser with the ASCOM Web site and click the WWT button on the taskbar to see the File Download dialog box.
6. In the ASCOM Platform Setup dialog box, click OK to confirm that you have installed the latest Critical Update or Service Pack.
7. In the ASCOM Platform Setup dialog box, follow the steps to finish installing the ASCOM Platform software.

Then, configure the ASCOM software to match your telescope:

1. Connect your telescope to your computer with a USB cable.
2. In WWT, click the top of the Telescope tab.
3. In the right corner, click Choose, click the down arrow, and then select the type of telescope that you have.
4. In the ASCOM Telescope Chooser dialog box, click Properties, and then configure the ASCOM software to match your telescope configuration.
5. When you close WWT, a message box asking if you want to save your settings changes will display, click Yes.

For both scientists and educators, the WorldWide Telescope will help to teach astronomy, computational science, and even provide opportunities for scientific discovery. For users of the telescope, there are rich media tours to that offer narration, music, text, and graphics to guide you through the night sky. It's like going to the planetarium without leaving your home! You can also make your own tours to share with others - a feature that teachers will really enjoy.

I've been playing with WWT tonight and it really is amazing to see the galaxies in their actual positions in the universe and be able to zoom and move them around on the screen. There are several different collections of images to explore - constellations, Hubble images, planets, and many more that I wasn't familiar with but were just as amazing. Click on one of the items from the collection zooms you right to the object in the sky. WWT is rich with technology that will appeal to astronomers, but it's still simple enough for the everyday user.

The telescope is based on technology that came out of Microsoft Research, an area of the company that has operated for 16 years which focuses on long-term, broad-based projects such as this. It's built on work that began with Jim Gray’sSkyServer and contributions to Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

You can view the WorldWide Telescope now from here: www.worldwidetelescope.org.