Microsoft Research - World Wide Telescope

This is the official unveiling of the app that made Scoble cry . . . now available to anyone on the Internets.

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

So what is it?  MSR has essentially used something like Photosynth (I'm guessing) to stitch together images of space from all over so that you can basically navigate the universe in 3D much like you can today in 2D using any of the freely available map web sites.  You can zoom out of a galaxy and then zoom into it 'powers of ten' style . . . pretty cool.  I mean when I was a kid I had to look at grainy black and white photos of 'space' and you really couldn't appreciate it's vastness . . . my kids will use their browser to zoom in and zoom out and scroll around and navigate . . . crazy.