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That picture kind of breaks my sense of perception. When I first looked at it, I entirely mis-categorized the scale, and thinking it was looking North from San Bernadino, I was able to place the lakes and landmarks in order for it all to fit, and it pretty much worked, my mind easing over unrecognized characteristics as places I'd not been.

Then I read the article.

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I had the opposite reaction. I tried to convince myself that I couldn't be recognizing the landscape in the vast area even though I did. I zoomed in and immediately recognized the area of Colorado where I work. I saw the highway I drive every day, major lakes, hogbacks, etc. If the clouds weren't in the way,I think I could have even found my neighborhood.

I believe that one of the reasons that it looks strange to us is that the image is captured using a "push broom scanner," where the satellite captures one line of the image at a time as it flies above the Earth, so the usual rules of perspective do not apply. The image is the same geographical width at the bottom as is it at the top.

Also known as isometric projection. Although, because the telescope has a such a small field of view, perspective projection would give virtually the same image.

Right. It seems like it's essentially an object-space telecentric view (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecentric_lens).

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