Scotland   This image is based on GTOPO30 elevation data, freely downloadable from a US Geological Survey web site. A small C program was used to convert this data into a 16-bit PGM image, which was then used as a height field in POV-Ray. The ground texture was extracted from one of NASA's Earth observatory's earth views. The image shows most of Scotland on a late summer evening, as seen through a camera with wide angle lens from a height of 115 km, looking in a northwesterly direction. The white streak in the top left of the image is the reflection of the sun in the Atlantic Ocean. The late evening time is chosen, so that the oblique illumination from the sun, 10 degrees above the horizon, emphasizes the altitude variations.

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