The technology sounds achingly simply. Take a standard digital camera, a robotics tripod developed by Charmed Labs in Austin, shoot photos across the entire panoramic landscape and then seamlessly blend them (by stitching and placing them in a grid) to create an ultra-wide photo that can show you a vista as big as Utah's Salt Lake Flats or as relatively small as cemetery in Durham, CT. The idea sprung out of Ames' efforts to stitch together Mars Rover photos to deliver panoramic views of the red planet to Earth-bound researchers.

You can check out the technology's handy work at Gigapan.org. I suggest you examine out the cemetery shot. I zoomed from a full view of the cemetery all the way to a hook on the red barn way, way in the distance (see photo above).