Celestia is a very cool piece of software which allows you to view any point in the universe (OK, not quite any: “Celestia comes with only the Hipparcos database of stars with accurately measured distances. They did not measure the distances to dim or variable stars, including close doubles.”); you can zoom in and out, rotate field of view, view orbits, play with time, etc. Here’s a picture I made of the earth as it would be seen from a point behind the moon at approximately 7AM GMT 4/4/05; because I had to scale the image down, you can only just make out the stars in the background - full screen, it is much more detailed.

Massive props for providing Linux and OS X versions of the software, as well as Windows. Download for free from here. Spend some time learning how to navigate using only the mouse.

For a couple programs which allow you to view any satellite photography of any point on earth, click here.

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