Additions to my astronomical gallery

[Julian]

I've added some new renders to my A:M Stills gallery of astronomical art that I first announced in this thread nearly a year ago. Having found some improved textures, I've finally been able to finish modeling the Earth's moon and the seven major moons of Saturn. The Saturn moon maps come from Steve Albers' planetary map site.

 

Titan was rendered with PlanetGlow, but it doesn't look exactly right. You shouldn't be able to see the horizon at all, but I can't think of any other solution that would work, except for vibrating the model really fast in multipass, but I'd rather not do that.

 

I used a displacement map (16 bpc EXR file) to create the equatorial ridge on Iapetus. I expect I'll need to update the the Iapetus texture next month when the Cassini probe goes in for its closest approach and fills in most of the "terra incognita" areas.

[mtpeak2]

Nice gallery Julian.

[martin]

Very fine.

[bentothemax]

I looked at the images in the gallery and I really like how the atmosphere of Earth looks. Could you tell me how you did it ? Thanks

 

 

 

Ben

[Julian]

I looked at the images in the gallery and I really like how the atmosphere of Earth looks. Could you tell me how you did it ? Thanks

I've made a couple of posts on the thread about PlanetGlow in the Newbies forum, but as I said there, I meant to write up a tutorial a year ago but I haven't gotten around to it.

[NancyGormezano]

Wonderful looking stuff.

 

However I must quote from yesterday's calendar entry (365 Stupidest Things Ever Said):

 

"Jupiter's moons are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist." - professor of astronomy Francisco Sizzi, in 1610.

 

That goes under the category: Logic, irrefutable.