WWT Newsletter: June 2021
Hello WWT community!
It’s been a little while since we’ve sent out an update but we’ve certainly been keeping busy! Here’s a brief rundown of just a portion of what’s new in the WWT world.
Best, Peter K. G. Williams, Director of the AAS WorldWide Telescope Project
Mars, Mars, Mars!
The Perseverance Rover landed on Mars in Jezero Crater on Feb 18! Visit our YouTube channel to compare Jezero Crater and Gale Crater (home to the Curiosity Rover). Explore Mars in the extremely detailed THEMIS IR Day 100 m/pixel imagery and put yourself on the surface of Mars with some panoramas from both Jezero (Perseverance) and Gale (Curiosity).
Astronomy Interactives for Online Learning
The WWT Ambassadors Program, led by Dr. Patricia Udomprasert at Harvard, recently created three new web-based educational activities for middle and high school students in collaboration with GBH, NASA’s Universe of Learning, and funding from NASA — all powered by WWT technology. Check out the Solar System Explorer, the Life Cycle of Stars, and Hubble’s Evidence for the Big Bang.
June 4 and 7: WWT at the American Astronomical Society Meeting 238
We invite registered AAS238 participants to join two WWT-related events. On June 4 — that’s tomorrow! — there will be an introductory WWT workshop. Preregistration is required. On Monday June 7, join a broader group to discuss the future of astronomy data visualization in the AAS 238 splinter session: Astronomical Data Visualization in the Age of Science Platforms. This event does not require any registration beyond basic AAS238 attendance.
New SOFIA Collection
Peruse a new batch of beautiful imagery from NASA’s SOFIA — the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy — in WWT. Compare SOFIA’s data against some of the newly supported HiPS IR datasets such as NEOWISE (found in the folder Explore → Collections → HiPS → Images → IR).
Embed WWT in Your Own Webpages
We teased it before and WWT’s new web embedding functionality has been perofrming well!. Check out WWT embeds used for Sky & Telescope articles, such as an interactive video highlighting the 15 brightest stars on New Years Eve or simply interactive image viewing of the Crab Nebula. Or create your own WWT embeds — our tool will generate HTML <iframe> code that you can plug right into a website.
Stay in Touch!
We always love to hear from WWT users and enthusiasts. Follow our social media accounts, email wwt@aas.org, or post on the WWT forum.