The Council of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) voted to take on the leadership of the WorldWide Telescope (WWT) project at the AAS winter meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. Doug Roberts, Adjunct Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Northwestern and CIERA member, led the WWT Planning Task Force and was in charge of preparing the proposal to the Council. Roberts was the Chair of the WWT Planning Task Force, which was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Various programs at CIERA have effectively used WWT, including outreach activities, such as Girls do Hack, Expanding Your Horizon, where middle and high school students create their own tours of the universe. WWT has been used in undergraduate classes as well, such as ASTRO 130 on the Solar System. Additionally, WWT has been used to create a video abstracts to accompany published papers, see an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYk1-lsVFDc.
Now that the AAS is supporting WWT, CIERA staff will continue to extend its functionality and use in various outreach, education and research activities and are excited to see where the program goes now that it is under the AAS!