Google Sky was introduced in 2007 as a free service of Google Earth. Earlier Google Earth was designed for viewing landscapes of Earth, but now the Californian enterprise has taken it a step ahead to enable its users to view the outer space. Just imagine the most sought after galaxies - Milky Way, Andromeda, and Nebulas are just a click way.
Google Sky is also known to provide its users with state of art technologies; one of them is the Sky-modality. Using Sky-modality you can select from a whooping 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies. Google sky uses approximately a million pictures coming through various researches and blends them together to create a perfect 3-D effect.
The World Wide Telescope was introduced by Microsoft recently to give Google Sky some competition. And to an extent it has been successful in doing so; the Microsoft World Wide Telescope has superior graphics and effects and gives a virtual feeling of traveling through the space. Word Wide Telescope takes a picture of a galaxy and later enables its users to zoom into it, creating a virtual reality of going through the space and while you are on your space cruise you can click on any star to see its information. The project is inspirational to both kids and adults, the kids can learn about space in a fun way while the older ones can get information easily.
The first feature that enables Microsoft World Wide Telescope to score over Google Sky is its interface. Microsoft World Wide Telescope has a very slick interface. The interface enables the user to switch over from places in space very easily. Secondly World Wide Telescope is capable of switching over databases very easily, which provides better graphics and effects over Google Sky. Google Sky has some limitations as it is an extension of Google Earth; it is not capable of handling poles. On the other hand, Microsoft World Wide Telescope is not built on axis of earth so it can provide perfect view of poles, in fact perfect view of any place for that matter.
However the above things do not mean that Microsoft World Wide Telescope is globally superior to Google Sky. Some of the features that make Google Sky better are that Microsoft World Wide Telescope runs only on the Microsoft Windows platform. That means no Mac OS X and no Linux. It has also been seen that Microsoft World Wide Telescope requires graphics cards and high end personal computers to enable smooth inflow of graphics.
One of the biggest accomplishments of Google Earth is that it is capable of running over all the three operating systems, i.e. Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is also capable of running over a large range of personal computers which do not have dedicated graphics cards owing to efficient design.
Google sky has many users; in fact there are over 350 million installation counts according to Google. It also provides its users to add content to its ever increasing database. Its features like planetary orrey, real-time horizon, lunar eclipse predictor, and other’s makes it favorite amongst people around the world. Whereas the recent launch of Microsoft World Wide Telescope is prone to face difficulties. The major difficulty can be to get users swap their preferences from Google Sky to Microsoft World Wide Telescope.
Google Sky is mainly powered by the images taken from the Hubble telescope whereas Microsoft World Wide Telescope includes a lot more than a few images from a single source; it is powered by images from NASA’s great fleet of space-borne telescopes and satellites. In addition to these, earth-bound observatories are also feeding Microsoft World Wide Telescope’s database for superior quality imaging. The World Wide Telescope offers more coverage of the universe and addition of rich data sets enables it to provide a more real virtual space travel. It also boasts of a superior user-friendly interface and unparalleled graphics.
The major setback of Google Sky is its poor styling and template design which dates back to 90’s, when it was launched. The frequent HTML popups can also be a big setback. Google Sky requires a minute check to apply new Aperture 2 photo management software, making it more suitable for 2D viewing, but if you are looking for seamless tour through the cosmos then Microsoft World Wide Telescope should be the right choice for you.
The World Wide Telescope is projected to get direct imaging from the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, partially owned by the owner of Microsoft, Bill Gates. The 8.4 meter telescope is to be built in Chile’s Atacama Desert by the year 2014. The telescope will have a 3-billion pixel digital camera to enable virtual surfing to new depths of space with billions of colored images every week.
In reply of this Google Sky has also joined MIT scientists who are designing a satellite based-observatory - The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to provide survey of entire space. Google is funding the powerful cameras that will be required to take images in this project.
The Microsoft World Wide Telescope was released as a tribute to Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who went missing off the California coast while he was researching to organize the large number of images and data being fed to the Microsoft World Wide Telescope.
Surely Microsoft World Wide Telescope can be a big risk to established customer-reputation of Google Sky as it has some unique features like enabling people to create their own space tours, superior graphics providing a great 3D effect, high level of detailing owing to weekly large updates of data and images, a user-interface interface, and last but the most important due to the Microsoft brand. It is a high time for Google to fasten its belt and give a good upgrade to Google Sky to upkeep its established reputation of providing an unparallel quality to compete with an all–geared Microsoft World Wide Telescope service.
