Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The WorldWide Telescope Map App allows you to view most real-time telescope data right in Bing Maps. This provides context for where celestial entities are in real time if you were to look up at the night sky. You can navigate the universe the same way you do Bing Maps by grabbing an area and dragging the universe map around.

What’s neat is that when using Bing Maps “streetside view” you are able to basically look up at the sky and see precisely where the stars, planets, & constellations are – IN REAL TIME.  This is important because as we know, the sky looks different depending on the time of year.

HOW TO USE WORLDWIDE TELESCOPE IN BING
One of the things you can do is enable a telescope pointer, which you can drag onto the map.  The map will fade to reveal the constellations above you.  You can also access all the "collections" from the Worldwide Telescope Community, including Constellations, Solar System, All-Sky Surveys, Spitzer Studies, Chandra Studies, Hubble Studies, Astrophotography, Radio Studies, NOAO Studies, Gemini Studies, Messier Catalog, Planets/Moons, Earth (Bing), Panoramas, and Tours. Simply click on a collection, which zips you down to Earth and changes the map style to Streetside (where available). Once you’re on the ground, just look up.