Oooh, you mean the ball you put in the scene surrounded by the sky map (I'll use skymap to refer to the inner and outer booleaned spheres) is reflective? In that case yes you can. However, it won't benefit (a lot) from true ambience as that has little to do with reflective materials. Though if your ground is not reflective it will light that. Not quite clear on what you mean concerning not being able to see the pano if the outer sphere is not transparent. You sure that you're texturing the inner sphere of the skymap and not the outer sphere of the skymap? Second, are you sure that you have all lights turned off. And it's best to have the sky set to black. with no sun etc. A second way to get more directed light off the sphere in a certain place is to aim a spotlight up at it where the sun should be and set the intensity to 999, make sure it doesn't hit any objects in your scene. Sorry if this wasn't helpfull, I'll get some screenshots tomorrow, atm it's my bedtime yawn.