As of today, WorldWide Telescope is no longer limited to the Windows operating system, as the an alpha version of the WorldWide Telescope Web Client was released – and it’s based on Silverlight 2.0! This means that you can now bring this virtual telescope to any platforms that supports Silverlight 2.0. Here’s a screenshot of the web client running in my browser:

Below is a list of features in the web client:

• 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

It is also said that the ability to change viewing location and a basic Solar System View are coming soon to the web client. It’s great to see Microsoft utilizing the capabilities of what Silverlight can do and brings its software cross-platform.

You can view the WorldWide Telescope Web Client (alpha) at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient