Indonesia’s Boscha Observatorium and The Worldwide Telescope

I talked a little about Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope project earlier this year when it was opened to the public.

A mail in my inbox this morning talks about a project that my colleges in Indonesia have been working on to make this technology available to visitors of the Boscha Observatorium.

Through a pretty straight forward hardware setup, and some translation of the training and client software into Indonesian Bahasa, the WWT is now available to all visitors of the Observatorium.

A great tool for students and adults alike.

The Jakata Post carries the story in this mornings edition;

Toni Seno Hartono, Microsoft Indonesia’s national technology officer, said the software, which was demonstrated to an Indonesian audience by Microsoft’s cofounder Bill Gates during his visit to Jakarta in May, was part of the company’s social responsibility initiative.

“Our aim is to bring astronomy to the general public. This is related to education, something that concerns us and which Gates focused on during his visit here,” Toni said as quoted by kompas.com.

Boscha head Taufik Hidayat welcomed the software saying it could present data informatively and was very user friendly. The software, he said, would help astronomers, especially for educational purposes.

The software will also be installed at the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah amusement park and the Taman Ismail Marzuki planetarium.