World's largest spherical panorama

Somebody once said to me, "Prague is a winter city." Well, here today, on the first official day of winter (although let's face it, winter has been here for a while already), let me take you to Prague.... This is pretty amazing.

From Wired:

360 Cities, a Dutch company, has created a stunning panoramic photo of Prague in the Czech Republic. “The creation of this image represents my previous five years’ obsession with all things panoramic,” says Jeffrey Martin, founder and CEO of 360 Cities. “If you’re stuck at home over Christmas, feeling humbuggy and don’t feel like hanging out with your family, you can explore Prague instead.”

What makes this panoramic photo interesting to viewers is that you can zoom in and out, move up or down or change your view–much like with Google Street View maps.

The photo has been assembled from 600 shots clicked by a 21-megapixel Canon 5D Mark II camera and a 70-200mm lens, set to 200mm. The camera was mounted on a special robotic device that turned it tiny increments every few hours. The resulting data from the camera was about 40-gigabytes.

The photo measures 192,000 x 96,000 pixels, or 18.4 billion pixels altogether.