Creating a skydome for Hoth

I now wanted to create a skydome to act as the sky for my scene. This was done simply with the addition of using a panoramic image for the material. I first created a large sphere and scaled it up to be very large. Converting the sphere to an editable poly I was then able to cut the bottom half of the sphere out of the scene. Clicking M I was able to bring up the material properties and add my panoramic image.
The effect it created is shown below.