External cameras

“Check it out," he said, obviously relieved at her laughter. He produced a device the size of his fist and set in on her desk, then activated it. The three-dimensional hologram of the station's entertainment net appeared over the 'projector.
 "Aside from the regular channels, this particular unit can tap into the external cam feeds. Watch."
 He touched the device, dialed up the magnification, and the image of a planet shimmered into view, about the size of a crashball.
 "My old stomping grounds," he said. "Despayre. A terrible place to visit, and in fact you couldn't anyway, 'cause once you're there, you're there. But it looks nice from this far away." He cocked his head in consideration of the green-and-blue image. "No, actually, it still looks awful."

(...)

The planet Despayre, already scorched lifeless and beset with cataclysmic groundquakes and volcanism, began to shake like some tormented creature in its death throes. Massive cracks, thousands of kilometers long and tens of klicks wide, striated the world. Mountains collapsed in one hemisphere as they jutted up and rose in another. It was impossible to see all this directly, of course, because of the cloud cover that had blanketed the surface, but the IR and VSI scopes showed everything all too clearly. The molten core of the globe, already venting through innumerable new volcanoes, oozed to the surface and produced oceans of lava that spread across the land. This was how the planet had been born, and this was how it was dying.

***

Star Wars: Death Star Part 2 Chapter 55-56