Recomputing the Sky

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has unveiled the largest and clearest image of the night sky ever assembled. This so-called 'TeraPixel' sky map was generated with the help of some of Microsoft's latest HPC and parallel software assets. Quoting: 'Compared to the old sky image, the TeraPixel version is much more refined. With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away, it looks like a true unified image of the sky above. It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s.'" You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac. No word at the site about Linux or whether Moonlight works there.

Comments

Even Baking Ads Into Their Analogies

[eldavojohn]

It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s

Oh, I see what you did there. Here, let me try:

It's like going from gaming on Windows 1.0 in 1985 to 1985-era Nintendo consoles

Or what about

It's like going from a red ring of death on an XBox console to Gran Turismo 3 on a Playstation 2

Oh and I also enjoy that you used your Space Act Agreement with NASA to "make planetary images and data available via the Internet to the public" and also promote the download and installation of silvercrap. Can't do something for the public without advertising and pushing proprietary software on people, can we? I hope Google gets the chance to do this with HTML5.

Getting ready for the MS bash

[capnchicken]

So this looks like a really cool thing that MS did, so I'm going to wait in wide eyed anticipation at how the slashdot community is going to trash it because it's from Microsoft and not Google (or at least be more overly critical of it). I do hope I'm wrong though.

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[pmontra]

They should have done it with JavaScript and JPEGs instead of using Silverlight, which doesn't work on my Linux.

Good enough as first bashing? .-)

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a cool thing, yes. It is, however, NOT cool that it requires Silverlight to view. There's no reason it should require that.

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[capnchicken]

Yeah, that'll work, though I'm sure Miguel is probably working on fixing that right now. ;)

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[pinkushun]

I hope you're wrong too :-)

Oh wait... the source material from the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) runs the hardware with the help of... drum roll... Linux (ref page 24)

BAM!

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[Mongoose Disciple]

Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.

This is one of the handful of things that Silverlight does really well.

Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if this project was less a "We've got this cool thing, what Microsoft technology can we push with it?" and more "What's a thing we could do that would really show off a strength of Silverlight?"

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[hedwards]

Um, they didn't give the TCP/IP stack away, they borrowed it from BSD. In other words, they gave away something that they had been given and which other people could've easily gotten from the original source. I'm not really sure why MS should get any sort of credit for that.

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[xlotlu]

Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.

Actually you're trolling more than playing devil's advocate. There's a sh*tload of zoom & pan-enabled image viewing libraries, both in JS and Flash, all using tiles just like Silverlight -- try to google some.

And for that matter it's trivial to DIY from scratch using canvas, which of course IE conveniently doesn't support, but that problem was solved too long ago. OpenLayers, which you might have seen at work at OpenStreetMap, includes a VML rendering backend, besides canvas and SVG.

The really funny part about your "advocating" is that MS has an Ajax library that does exactly the same thing as its Silverlight counterpart: http://www.seadragon.com/developer/ajax/

Re:Getting ready for the MS bash

[Locutus]

Except that Silverlight is probably _why_ they did it in the first place. Flash and standardized HTML5 are threats to Windows and without Windows Microsoft is history so Silverlight is the hammer, the night sky is but one nail. Is there an iPhone or Android app for that? I didn't think so but you can bet that when they ship the next new Microsoft phone software, they'll release one for it.

20 years of watching these people operate points me to these kinds of conclusions.

LoB

Moonlight 3.0.40818.0 on Linux here

[Svenne]

Nope. Doesn't work.

Re:Moonlight 3.0.40818.0 on Linux here

[vegiVamp]

You keep well away of all the other inferior products, and then you go for american 'beer' ?

Seems...

[mcgrew]

With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away

It seems the seams are gone. Excellent! I'll have to see how this compares to Google Sky. I'll bet I'll still prefer NASA's closeups from their Picture of the Day Gallery, though.

Re:Beware...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, they can't take the sky from you.

I can view the image?

[benwiggy]

You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac.

These two statements appear to contradict each other.

If it requires Silverlight, then I can't view it, because I don't want that cock on my computer.

Re:If mixing metaphors were illegal...

[tuffy]

Perhaps it means the new sky can be enjoyed only until Microsoft decides to pull the plug on its servers.

It's interesting where a lot of the time went

[idontgno]

According to TFA, one of the major bottlenecks was just copying files:

Just transferring the final 1,025 files (802 GB total) off the cluster took 2.5 hours using a 1 Gbps link.

They must have been using Vista Explorer pre SP-1 to do the file copy.

Re:It's interesting where a lot of the time went

[clone53421]

They must have been using Vista Explorer pre SP-1 to do the file copy.

Hmm? Transferring 802 GB over a 1 Gbps link is going to take 1.78 hours as a bare minimum and assuming you lose some time on the overhead and don’t necessarily have 100% of the network’s bandwidth available to you the whole time, 2.5 hours doesn’t seem terribly long.

BSOD

[JustOK]

Blue Sky of Death

Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to!

[Hijacked Public]

Help me understand how installing a free broswer plugin distributed by Microsoft, in order to view a single image on a web site, constitutes selling my soul.

Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to!

[clone53421]

Because Microsoft insists on re-inventing the wheel so that they can force people to use Microsoft(TM) wheels.

Halo 2 on Xbox 360?

[Plastic Pencil]

Sorry to be the dick-ish correctionist, but isn't the proper analogy, at least Halo 3 on 360? Halo 2 was an Xbox 1 game from 2004.

And yes, Grizzly Adams did have a beard.

Why This Sucks

[InsertCleverUsername]

Please select your response from the following /.-approved categories (check all that apply):

This project sucks because...
    [ ] Microsoft is evil
    [ ] They totally stole this idea from
    [ ] They've never done ANYTHING original or noteworthy
    [ ] EVERYTHING they do is about hurting consumers
    [ ] did this 100 times better 10 years ago
    [ ] Microsoft killed my family and made me watch

Re:Beware...

[The_mad_linguist]

That's FOX's job.

Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to!

[Kr3m3Puff]

Because Microsoft insists on re-inventing the wheel so that they can force people to use Microsoft(TM) wheels.

You mean Microsoft(TM) Wheel(R) Series 7, which will go end of support next month, don't you?

Re:Google Maps

[Atzanteol]

Google:
There's some latency as the site fetches images and scales images. Overall works pretty well.

Bing:
The site asks me to download and install Silverlight.exe which doesn't work on my operating system.

Perhaps I'm not as easily impressed as you?