Would love some feedback or criticism on this tutorial. I spent a lot of time making it and I hope you found this useful.
awesome 
I’m a beginner & enjoyed making it
I`m glad to hear that!
Great tutorial! I enjoyed the results with your method.
Question…instead of just a black World background that you show, I want to use a World-Background-Environment Texture such as the Tycho Skymap to add a starfield. The problem is I cannot figure out how to isolate this from the filter effects that are done in the atmosphere Renderlayer. The background seems to be getting the blur and glare added to the starfield in the final render?? Maybe it cannot be isolated?
The World has a pass index of 0, and it cannot be changed. To isolate it from all the other objects in your scene, simply set the pass index of these objects to a non-zero value.
Thanks Akikun. I will try that.
I also discovered that in the Renderlayer tab there is a selection for “Use Environment” and I was able to uncheck it for the atmosphere renderlayer and that worked too.
Awesome vid… but i seem to be off one detail…
my shader logic looks exactly like yours … only i dont get the “noise” aka stars in my render…
any hints on what might be wrong?
NVM … the stars are showing up in my renders… just not my preview render…
Thanks Akikun.
I also found that I could uncheck “Use Environment” in the Renderlayers panel to isolate it.
I forgot to mention that because (at least to me) I find it trickier to use. But yes it works too.
I`m glad to hear you figured it out. Would love if you could post your final renders here.
Here is my small animation using your tutorial with respect to planetary atmosphere.
That was amazing!
Well , If you gonna make all planets then I am going to follow you 
On a sidenote. Uranus does have rings like Saturn. Neptune and Jupiter have rings too
you could use a simple cylindrical map
there are a few around
this one i made back in 2011 – with imaging from the Keck telescope
or this from “Planetary Pixel Emporium”
http://planetpixelemporium.com/uranus.html
as to rings - Uranus has thin rings that are just barely visible
even this render has the rings way to visible
rendered in Celestia 1.7 ( svn pull)
Yes… But rings are awesome !
I have decided to do more planet tutorials. I found some good textures. Should be out within 2 weeks. i’ll see how many planets I end up making. 
Nice post. Really a relevant one. You know today’s most of the students ambition is to become an space scientist. So i hope it will be an effective information for more, especially for students. Thanks a lot. For more details visit research paper writing service reviews
Teenujons post reported as SPAM
Improved planet tutorial coming on friday.