What planet is this?
Although seemingly something out of
The Little Prince,
the planet is actually Earth.
More specifically, it is a small part of the
Earth incorporated into a four image
stereographic "Little Planet " projection.
The central fisheye
image points down, while the surrounding wide-angle
images were taken at a 30 degree tilt and added digitally later.
Earth-anchored items surrounding the image center include green
grass,
dark shadows, and
trees near and far.
At the image top ("noon" if the planet were a clock) is the well-lit
Parkes Radio Telescope
dish in
New South Wales,
Australia.
The surrounding sky contains many jewels of the night including the
Moon at 9 pm, the plane of our
Milky Way Galaxy at 1:30 pm and 7 pm, and the
Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy at 5 pm.
A full field interactive version of this scene can be found
here.
You must log in to post a comment.