So last night I was introduced to the Gigapan.

Gigapan is a collaborative project of Google, Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division's Robotics Group. It is a robotic platform that attaches to a digital camera and some computer software. The robotic platform allows a user to take a photograph, then it will re-aim the camera with great precision, to take another photograph. After taking many photos, the software stitches all the pictures into a gigapixel image.

The results are absolutely stunning. Check out this panoramic picture from Obama's Inauguration. Zoom in. Keep going and going and going and going and going and well, you get the point. The shot contains 220 individual pictures and totals a whopping 1,474 megapixels! Enjoy crowd surfing.

If you want to check out more photos using this technology head over to the Gigapan website. (thanks morgan)