Sky and Telescope - April 2015 - 32

Browsing the Sky

ences such as a rover's view of the Martian surface. With
red/blue glasses handy, you can even get the view in 3D.
Perhaps the ultimate experience is to view WWT
through Oculus Rift, a headset that plunges you into
a virtual reality. (The consumer version of the headset
might become available in 2015; so far, only preliminary
versions have been released.) WWT oﬀers a virtual tour
of the International Space Station (ISS), where you can
hover just outside while the Earth rotates below. ISS Commander Chris Hadﬁeld took it for a spin at a 2014 TED
conference. His only criticism? The ISS would not have
that many Soyuz capsules docked at one time.

Rallying the Troops
Multiple studies have shown that students learn more
from interactive tools than from traditional learning
materials, and kids and adults alike love using WWT -
"Cooler than Call of Duty," proclaimed one sixth-grade
student. So the software makes an ideal platform for
astronomy education and public outreach.
To that end, the WWT Ambassadors (WWTA) Program trains active researchers ranging from advanced
undergraduates to tenured faculty, as well as retired
astronomers. About 100 PhD-level Ambassadors have
brought WWT into a wide variety of educational environments over the past few years: creating sky tours, presenting at science fairs and conventions, and aiding in-classroom research. Since kids learn to operate the WorldWide
Telescope astonishingly quickly, Ambassadors' primary
role is to bring deeper physics, math, chemistry, and
32

April 2015 sky & telescope

WWT AMBASSADORS

INTERACTIVE LEARNING The WorldWide
Telescope Ambassador program brings the
astronomy software and associated curricula to
a sixth-grade classroom.

For instructions on how to use WWT and to access
WWT sky tours, go to is.gd/worldwidetelescope.

engineering knowledge to bear on students' questions.
Ambassadors may answer questions online or in classrooms where teachers are using WWTA curricula.
WWT has recruited Ambassadors throughout the U.S.
and in countries such as Poland, China, and India. If you
are interested in bringing WWTA to your area or becoming an Ambassador yourself, we encourage you to contact
us via the WWTA website (wwtambassadors.org).
The Ambassador program isn't the only direction
WWT is growing. In 2015 WWT's code will become open
source. The software is already free to download, but
making the code open source means it will also become
available to the general public to modify. Those working
at universities, high schools, museums, or planetariums
can go far beyond creating sky tours, changing the code
itself to expand and enhance its capabilities, or even
incorporating it into their own programs.
WWT's goal has always been to augment professional
research while also engaging the general public. Now
individuals and institutions with similar goals can leverage
WWT to make their mutual ambitions a reality. ✦
Alyssa Goodman, a Harvard University astronomy professor
and Smithsonian Institution research associate, and Curtis
Wong, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, have collaborated on the WorldWide Telescope and other astronomy
visualization and education projects for the past 10 years.

http://www.is.gd/worldwidetelescope http://www.wwtambassadors.org

Sky and Telescope - April 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - April 2015