Astronomy Basics

New Horizons - A Pluto tour by Albert L. a 11th grade student from Cambridge, MA New Horizons Mission in WorldWide Telescope Credits A tour by Albert L. a 11th grade student from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge, MA

A tour exploring what constellations are and why we can't see all of them at all times during the year.

Amateur astronomers love to observe galaxies. Although you need a dark site, you can spot some galaxies even through small telescopes. This tour shows you seven of the sky's finest galaxies. Credits Michael Bakich, Astronomy Magazine

This tour takes you on a journey that spans 25 orders of magnitude, beginning on Earth, looking at objects roughly one meter in size, and spanning the Universe to scales that are roughly 10 25 meters in size. The tour stops at several points and gives you...

In this tour, we will take a look at some familiar stars in our night sky that are actually two or more stars together, and we will explore the question of why our Sun does not have any stellar companions. Credits Dr. Stella Offner, CFA

Here are several open star clusters that you can identify without binoculars or a telescope from a dark-sky site. Credits Jeremy McGovern

John Huchra, former president of the American Astronomical Society, passed away on October 8, 2010. John’s colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in collaboration with the creators of WorldWide Telescope at Microsoft Research, have...

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's discovery of moons around Jupiter, we have produced a WWT Tour recreating these historic observations. This is an example of the kind of teaching Ambassadors will be able to do using WWT. Credits Alyssa...

A tour by David a 5th grade student from Issaquah, Washington Credits David, 5th grade student from Issaquah, Washington

Tour of the radio wavelength view of the inner Galaxy. We start by reviewing all-sky views in various wavelenghts and then zoom into a radio view of Sagittarius A and finally into Sagittarius A*, the location of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic...