‘little planets’, are stunning images that are created out of panoramic photos.
In Geometry the process is known as Stereographic projection.
You can imagine it as a way of picturing a sphere as a plane. It has practical uses and in Complex analysis, Geology, and Cartography.
In digital photography it allows a flat plane to be re mapped by altering the pictures polar coordinates.
The original planet photo is a panorama of a landscape, in this case taken on an iPhone. From this type of image a polar panorama can be made.
By changing the entire image into a square the polar coordinates can be accurately mapped. This can be done in an image editing program or app.
The polar coordinates of the image are then altered from rectangular to polar. This places each point and vector onto a spherical plane. For little planets and globes the square image should be rotated 180 degrees before altering the polar coordinates. Leaving the image in its original angle the effect is also reversed with some interesting results.
