Little Planets

The hunt for Earth-like planets is over: We found them on Flickr. In simple terms, a polar panoramic, or stereographic projection, is a way to map a sphere as a plane. We could throw around some ridiculous math words like azimuthal, bijective and isometry, but instead we'll stick to photos.

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Think about it this way: Your world is in three dimensions. If you were to photograph all of your surroundings, and then project them onto a surface, it would result in a stereographic projection. The word stereography simply means the act of translating a solid body, like the Earth, into a plane — like a piece of paper. The only drawback is that it's impossible to flatten a sphere without some weird (or really cool) distortion. In photography, the use of this method has resulted in a little collection of little planets.

Flickr user gadl has an entire set, with a detailed explanation of the process. If you want to make your own polar panorama, here is another explanation. In short: Hold your camera steady, take a panoramic series and stitch it together. Wrap it into a circle using editing software such as Photoshop. This technique can be a nice alternative to wide panoramas, which are often difficult to print. And your friends will be impressed by all of the strange and distant lands you've seen.

We want to see your attempts. Join our Flickr group, add your image to our pool, and tag it "panoramic." We'll select a few to feature on our blog on April 3.