Astrophysical Concepts

This is a tour developed by Professor Alyssa Goodman at Harvard University. This tour introduces cepheid variable stars and how the relationship between their pulsation periods and their luminosities has helped to estimate cosmic distances. Credits Alyssa...

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

A brief tour of the X-Ray sky and a look at sources of high energy X-Rays Credits Curtis Wong, MSR

A brief overview of selected features in the new Equinox Beta release. Credits Curtis Wong, Microsoft Research The full version of this tour can be downloaded here (by right-clicking) and viewed in the desktop version of WorldWide Telescope.

Explore the Universe through the eyes of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. WISE surveyed the entire sky in infrared light. Credits Nancy Alima Ali, Bryan Mendez, Kyle Fricke, UC Berkeley, CSE@SSL

Multiple Generations of Star Formation in the W5 region from Spitzer Space Telescope. Credits Lori Allen, Xavier Koenig, Sanjana Sharma

This Tour is designed to help users understand the cause of Moon phases and be able to predict where the Moon is relative to the Sun and Earth during a particular phase, and vice versa. The Tour encourages users to check their understanding at the end by...

This tour discusses the history and significance of the Transit of Venus in front of the Sun, an event which allowed astronomers to determine the size scale of our solar system. Credits Jonathan Jackson, Harvard College

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

Explains how astronomers are able to detect extrasolar planets and some findings from the TrES project and the promise of the Kepler telescope. Narrated and produced by Sanjana Sharma. This tour has a nice animation sequence that shows how an orbiting...