Tours

Astronomy and Astrology

This tour explores the differences between astronomy and astrology. It answers the questions: What is the definition of each? How are the signs of the zodiac defined? [3 min] Credits Teiyana Nolan The full version of this tour can be downloaded here (by...

Astronomy for Everyone

A six-minute introduction to Astronomy. This Tour gives a broad overview of many important topics for budding astronomers to explore. Credits Alyssa Goodman, Curtis Wong, Lisa Dettloff, Megan Watzke, Sanjana Sharma

Astronomy vs. Astrology

This is a tour developed by the students of Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. This tour introduces the differences between astronomy and astrology. Credits Kylie Walulak & Alexandra Long The full version of this tour...

Big Dipper Galaxy Pointing System

Learn to use the Big Dipper to find galaxies in the night sky. Mary, an experienced planetarium show writer, gives a primer on how to find several beautiful galaxies that you can look at with binoculars or a backyard telescope, and she shows you where the...

Birth of a Star like Our Sun

Our sun, and other stars like it, do not remain exactly as they appear now. Stellar lifetimes are much longer than ours, but like us, they progress though stages of life. The story of these stages tells us about the formation of the planets and their fate...

Center of the Milky Way

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...

Cepheid Variable Stars and the Cosmic Distance Ladder

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...

Cosmic Rays

This is a tour developed by the students of Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. This tour introduces cosmic rays and their impact. Credits Joe Katusich & Corey Sullivan The full version of this tour can be downloaded...

Discoveries of Galileo

This is a tour developed by the students of Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. This tour introduces Galileo's discoveries. Credits Peri Michael & Howard Xu The full version of this tour can be downloaded here (by right...

Dust and Us

"Dust & Us" is a brief tour of the dark regions in galaxies that form stars and planets. This tour gives a new perspective on how important dust, which we normally think of as a nuisance, is to creating planets like the one upon which we live. For more...

Dwarf Planets

This is a tour developed by the students of Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. This tour introduces the five dwarf planets in our solar system. Credits Pei-Lun Kao & Andrew Emerson The full version of this tour can be...

Eagle Nebula

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

Earth at Night

A tour featuring the NASA map of our planet, "Earth at Night", available at the NASA Visible Earth site made by Marc Imhoff (NASA GSFC), Christopher Elvidge Credits Dinoj Surendran, MSR

Eccentricity

This is part of a series of tours developed by Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. She uses WWT to introduce new concepts at the beginning of each lecture. This tour discusses the shapes of different orbits around our...

Eta Carina Nebula

A brief tour of the Eta Carina Nebula from the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credits Curtis Wong, MSR

Exoplanet Explorer

This visualization demonstrates how planets orbit around stars and how projects like the Kepler mission detect planets around other stars using the transit method. Two high school students developed this interactive page using javascript and WWT API. This...

Fulani Skies

Fulani Skies was created with WWT for use in the Smithsonian Exhibit African Cosmos: Stellar Art exhibit that ran June 20, 2012—December 9, 2012. The African Cosmos project considers the rich, complex and little-studied topic of African cultural astronomy...

Galilean Moons

This is part of a series of tours developed by Prof. Stella Offner for use in her Astro 101 course at U. Mass Amherst. She uses WWT to introduce new concepts at the beginning of each lecture. This tour introduces the four largest moons of Jupiter. Credits...

Galileo's New Order

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...