Just finished developing this blazing earth texture in blender, quite happy with results so far.
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Ok, so I received some constructive criticism in blender artist Facebook group stating this would look much better if I added more clouds and dual stage blur for the atmosphere, I made the changes and it now looks much better, happy days 
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Have you seen the SPACE VFX tutorials by Gleb and CG masters? What you have done is good but you can greatly improve it if you follow their course.
I haven’t followed Glebs training course as I do not have the resources spare unfortunately.
it’s really strange that a “CG master” use sphericall mapping instead of equirectangular map for mapping an equirectangular map to a sphere … So perhaps it’s a good start for shading stuffs.
But, It ll be better to explain to beginners the right way to map an earth picture to a sphere…
anyway… As it s not possible to comment on this youtube link. I 'll share here a blender file with a correct mapped sphere.
Sorry, it’s not ,perhaps, the right place to post that…
i just try to avoid to the others a mistake
A “CG old guy”
Ps: just use the textures in the youtube channel link and relink them in the blend file.earth.blend (782.6 KB)