After spending a couple of days looking at WorldWide Telescope from Microsoft. This is a very fun program to run. The pictures from NASA telescopes are simply beautiful. There is a lot more there than I can uncover in just a few days, but here is what I found out.
It is a good tool for use in the classroom. By using this, you can actually place some of the wonderful NASA pictures in the night night sky. I’m not sure it is good for planning night view sessions at the telescope, but if you have a computer driven scope, it will allow you to point at specific night sky targets. Trouble with this is that it likes to be online. While it does work offline, it seems to be slower. Getting data/photos on-line do take up space on your hard drive. I’m not sure how much space yet, but I will again keep looking into that.
For me, this is a good addition to other software I have, but I don’t think it will replace anything. More to come.
Something to look at then, even if I don’t have a telescope myself (let alone a computer-driven one!)