clipped from: www.abc.net.au   

Amateur astronomers now have internet access to imagery from the best telescopes on earth and in space with a new online service.

Eta Cerina
Eta Cerina nebula, as viewed on the new site

Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope merges cosmic images from some of the world's most advanced telescopes into an online version of the universe available for anyone to explore.

Images of the crab nebula are also available (Worldwide Telescope)
Images of the crab nebula are also available
Messier 81 galaxy (Worldwide Telescope)
Messier 81 galaxy
"Users can see the x-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago," says Dr Roy Gould, a researcher from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Online visitors can pick telescopes they want to view through, with choices including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The site competes with a star-gazing Sky feature added to Google Earth's mapping service last year.