... Credit Copyright: Axel Mellinger Explanation: This quite stunning panorama of the entire sky is a mosaic of 51 wide-angle photographs . ... Using a mathematical prescription like one often used to map the whole Earth's surface onto a single flat image, the complete digital mosaic was distorted and projected onto an oval shape. The image is oriented so the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs horizontally through the middle with the Galactic center at image center and Galactic north at the top. ...