I heard about Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope a few weeks back through their presentation at TED and today, I saw an article featured on the MSN website about it’s public beta finally released.

The WorldWide Telescope takes images from numerous sources such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and compiles them into a single user friendly interface allowing people of all ages to essentially fly though space and view planets and galaxies one would never normally see.

While the software may be in beta, it all runs quite well. It’s very similar to Google Earth in the way that the images are streamed to you as you require them which makes for a very lightweight application storage-wise but heavy on the internet connectivity and graphics requirements.

None the less, I highly recommend everyone check it out at least once and be sure to give the final a try whenever that may be.