WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes to enable seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. You can pause a tour at any time and explore on your own. Or you can stop and research a deep sky object with the multiple information sources available. When you’re ready, rejoin the tour where you left off.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft Corp.’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the X-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from 1,000 years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen-Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high-energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Pan and zoom from aerial views of the moon and selected planets, and see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth, at any time in the past or future. The WorldWide Telescope is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, data and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience. Space explorers of all ages will feel empowered to navigate and understand the universe with the WorldWide Telescope’s simple yet powerful user interface.

Official site: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org

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Hercules, a specialist in mobile, digital DJing products, is launching a truly unique handheld wireless DJing controller. This twin-deck, ultra-compact, DJ mixer allows you to mix mp3 music easily on your computer via intuitive and practical controls – completely wirelessly. With the Mobile DJ MP3, the DJ is no longer hidden away from the life of the party. A wireless device, the Mobile DJ MP3 lets the DJ groove and mingle with the crowd while playing and mixing the tracks stored on the computer. One simply connects the compact RF (Radio Frequency) transmitter to the PC’s USB port to control the music from anywhere in the room. Thanks to the device’s dual display, DJs can easily view the tracks they want to mix. Plus, they can scratch and even add fun sound effects like handclaps, echoes, loops and more.

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In years past, you had to recharge your rechargeable batteries before leaving on a trip or sliding them into your electronic device. Otherwise, you ran the risk of depending on nearly dead batteries once you reached your destination, as stored power tends to degrade over time. Now GE/Sanyo steps into the void with its eneloop line of batteries, which come pre-charged and ready to use right out of the pack. Even better, the batteries have an extremely low self-discharge rate, with the ability to maintain 85 percent of residual capacity after one year of storage and 70 percent residual capacity after two years of storage. As a result, leaving home without recharging the batteries won’t ruin your Bryce Canyon vacation or cross-country plane trip.

Eneloop batteries offer a number of advantages over traditional alkaline batteries, including up to four times more power when used in a digital camera, high performance even at low temperatures (down to 23 degrees F) during your winter vacation, and a vast cost savings in the long run. The eneloop advantages are even more glaring when compared to typical NiMH batteries: not only are they ready for use right out of the box, but they generally last longer than most NiMH batteries (continuous and frequent recharging can destroy other NiMH models) and save both time and money (traditional NiMH charging is slow when you’re in a hurry, while rapid chargers are expensive). All told, you can recharge eneloop batteries up to 1,000 times without experiencing a memory effect; just charge the amount you need and you’re set.

This compact eneloop charging kit comes with two 2,000 mAh AA batteries, which are ideal for everything from digital cameras to TV remotes to portable audio players. The kit also offers a number of safety features, including an over-voltage protection system that shuts down when a dry-cell battery is accidentally inserted and a built-in protection system that boasts industry-leading safety and reliability features. And thanks to the unit’s foldaway AC plug–which offers worldwide voltage–you can take the lightweight charger virtually anywhere.

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