WorldWide Telescope

Spec sheet

Purpose

WorldWide Telescope enables visualization and sharing of scientific data and stories from telescopes, observatories, and institutions for students, researchers, museums, planetariums, and scholarly publications.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Support

Users can ask questions and get help through the online WWT Forum or contact the project by email.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Developer API

The documentation describes a Layer Control API for programmatically loading data into the WWT Windows application.Read 7 Oct 2026 · docs.worldwidetelescope.org

Exploration

Users can explore the sky at different wavelengths, view telescope imagery, watch guided tours, and explore the Solar System in 3D.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Notable limits

The WWT Excel add-in is no longer maintained and is unlikely to work on recent operating system installations.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Open source

The project describes its software and data sets as free and open source, and says its source code was released under the MIT License.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Planetariums

The Windows client supports planetarium setups from single-projector domes to multi-server, multi-channel dome projection, including warping and blending.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Project sponsor

WorldWide Telescope is a fiscally sponsored project of NumFOCUS, a nonprofit supporting the open-source scientific computing community.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Research tools

Researchers can use WWT’s rendering engine to visualize and analyze data inside Jupyter with pywwt.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Web client

The web client runs in a browser and requires no download; the site recommends a strong internet connection for the best experience.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Web embedding

WWT can be embedded in a webpage or used to build a custom application, and the project provides WebGL engine documentation.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Windows

The current stable Windows release listed is version 6.1.2.0, dated July 12, 2022, and WWT 6 supports Windows 7 through 11.Read 7 Oct 2026 · worldwidetelescope.org

Plans and prices

Every WorldWide Telescope plan and price →

Where Specifiction places it

• Astronomy Apps#32 of 357.1