The monochrome micropanorama looks really great even blown up. Did you just fade to transparent right around the edges of the images to get rid of the hard edges?

Thanks. I pieced it together by hand, but eventually NASA will release one done with their software that will be pretty close to flawless. Their panorama-stitching software takes care of things like blending the edges automatically. In mine, I did the blending by hand with a feathering tool that paints on transparency, so that the image below shows through. I set it to apply just a little bit of transparency at a time, so I brush on several strokes until I get just the right blend. I like doing this by hand because I can choose where to let stuff show through. For example, if the bottom image is higher quality than the top image, I make a lot of the top image transparent to favor the bottom image. Conversely, if the top image is better, I leave as much of it as I can. Automatic edge transparency doesn't apply that kind of judgment, although it's a lot less tedious!

I mentioned earlier that I use PSP for simple tasks, but for something like this I use a higher-end program called Micrografx Picture Publisher. Pretty much like PhotoShop, but with (IMHO) a more rational user interface that doesn't get in my way like PhotoShop's complicated interface does.