Today Microsoft launched a new stargazing feature within Bing Maps. In addition to being able to stand on a street corner and look around you, you can now look up and see the stars as well. What you see above is exactly what you would see if you were standing on that spot in the real world. You can zoom into a constellation or click on a star to move along the earth to that point underneath. With any point in the sky you can call up its name and details, but far more impressive, you can travel through time, choosing specific hours, dates, and years to see what the sky would look like, standing from that spot, in both the past and the future. 

The technology comes from Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope project which enables any computer to become a virtual telescope, exploring collected data about the sky and taking interactive tours through space. Microsoft's Silverlight technology allowed them to create a version of the project that could be added to Bing as an application. While Google has offered star-gazing features before in their products, such as Google Sky and the space features included within Google Earth, Bing is the first to add space with its basic web maps offering, allowing you to see the sky within their Street Side view. 

The WorldWide Telescope app for Bing doesn't include all of the functionality of the original piece of software, oddly enough you can't search the sky itself by keyword, you can only zoom out to space so far, and there is no option for taking or creating interactive tours. Instead Microsoft suggests a number of interesting points you can fly to. 

The results are still incredibly cool and since the Bing's interface can be a bit confusing, here's a quick step-by-step guide to activate the hidden feature and start exploring the skies:

Visit http://www.bing.com/maps/explore

Locate a spot within the maps you'd like to see the sky from. A city, a town, a spot on any street.

On the lower-left corner click on the "Map Apps" icon. 

From the list of apps that appears, click on WorldWide Telescope

 On the left-hand side, click on the telescope icon to start, and then click on your chosen point on the map. 

This will take you to the Street Side view or, if Street Side is not available in that area, straight to a map of the sky itself. From here simply click on the view and pan upwards. The sky will darken the more you look up and the stars will appear.  

Click on any point in the sky to move towards it or zoom into the sky as would normally a map. To identify a point, look to the lower left-hand corner of the window and click on the blue icon with the question mark (next to the clock). This will bring up an on-screen box that you can drag about the screen. Drop it on a point to have it display details.