The previous examples have shown that objects appear strongly distorted when we pass close by at nearly the speed of light. This rule, however, has a remarkable exception. To illustrate this, we have placed a fictitious sculpture in the shape of a sphere in the alley Kirchgasse (figure 11). The sphere, like a terrestrial globe, carries a grid of parallels and meridians. We drive past it at 90% of the speed of light and take a snapshot at the point of closest approach to the sphere. As expected, the sphere appears to be in front of us and the grid looks distorted. However, the outline of the sphere is still a circle. It can be shown that a sphere always appears to have a circular outline, regardless of the observer's speed and distance [9].