Saturday, March 1, 2008

Walt Disney , the space age, and the World Wide Telescope



The historical photos topic of this week is about "Walt Disney and the space age", i.e the end of the 50's, when everybody was dreaming about the conquest of space. Of course, everybody remember the Tomorrowland rocket, and above is a great picture of Walt with it.



As we know, the great "Man and the moon" tv series was incredibly popular. Walt did the presentation, and here are two photos, above Walt and the moon, and below, Walt in his office holding one of the space ship.



Wernher Von Braun - the man who created the Saturn 5 rocket and supervised the Apollo missions - was of a big help in the making of the series. Here he is with Walt Disney.



And here is Walt with Ward Kimball, close to another space ship of the series.



The video below is a short clip from the "Man and the moon" series.



Now, yesterday, february 29, 2008 - 50 years after Walt introduces America to the conquest of space - a major announcement was done by Microsoft: The new World Wide Telescope. A new technology that combines feeds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and weaves them together holistically to build a comprehensive view of our universe for each of us.
It looks like Google Sky, but it will probably be better and the site will be launch this spring.

Science educator Roy Gould and Microsoft's Curtis Wong give an astonishing sneak preview of the WWT on the video below.




Photo: copyright Disney.

1 comment:

bluesky said...

That software looks amazing! Great site btw.