Photopic Sky Survey

You might have noticed a few unusually bright points in the sky recently, and that's because right now there are actually 5 planets visible in the night sky right now; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Which brings us to the Photopic Sky Survey, "a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures." Imagine that Earth disappeared and you're floating in space in Earth's position. The survey is a spherical image that allows you to look in any direction. Up, down, left, right, towards the galaxy or off into deep space. You can even zoom in to see distant galaxies, and the site has an overlay mode that shows the constellations and planets.

At first I thought this was NASA's doing or something, but nope, it was all accomplished by one man, for fun. He even quit his job as a marketing director to devote the time necessary for the project. Check it.