Did that before but what i did was build a collage of the pics in Photoshop (If you don’t have Photoshop there are loads of free editors that allow you to do that) You can then make a new material, under the color map import the said collage and place that material on your sphere.
You can then offset and try different setting to make it look just right, I’ve found UVW mapping to be quite good.
Hope this helps.
Damian