@Zordan. Thanks for the name of the nebula. I found it easily on the net and have added it to my collection of images. Again, beautiful image.
The moon just wasn’t beautiful and i tried alot but never was satisfied so i decided to move the moon to another location and voila :)… muuuucho better result
- changed the sun size (thx Tald for the tip ;))
- the dark side of the earth is not so dark anymore especialy the clouds which now have a slight red touch on the twilight zone
- earth now has a nice smooth specularity
- background is darker adding more contrast to the image
- added a slight blooming effect
- no black bars thus more planet
the howto will take some time sry for the delay :o
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Lights of big cities are missing on the dark side of earth. They should start in the twilight region and be visible in the darkness unless of course you turn earth so that the ocean is in the dark ;).
Zordan, you have definitely improved your image greatly. Good job!
i love it 
Thx for your compliments nice to see that my work is loved 
->musk
yah working on it…
Well here is the promised howto.
The result of it should look like the attachment. Any questions ;)?
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Nice Earth model, not bad at all!!
Congrats
Long time no change…
- background improved
- lights added on the dark side (not so good seen from this perpective)
- new method for the atmosphere
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Nice work.
By the way, I’m pretty sure the the GIMP tutorial was cribbed from Greg Martin’s PS one.
Some time, no change but i had the urgent feeling to work on the planet scene again 
- spaceship added
- spacestation added (guess where i have the design from :D)
- planet colors
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I decided to double the length so the image fitts my two monitors now properly :).
changes:
- sun color, size, halo texture
- star background
- added mars
- added a tiny spaceship to the spacestation
- and of course the composition
the image is about 700kb
Look do me a favor go back to where you had the moon black and sun peering out side. I honestly liked that. I think thats where people seriously screw up. Take away space ship crap and stuff. Then make it so that there is shadow on earth. Basically what you start with. put just a tid bit on moon and then make the sun more scenarific as I like to say.
make more rays.
Then add thousands of lights near cities like this.
except kind of more realistic.
do that and you will earn a very very special place on my website. The frontpage! Dude if you perfect this you can use as wallpaper. Keep wide btw. Perfect wide version. You need to make wallpapers for hd monitors like mine. I can’t find shit for wallpapers man.
do everything I said except screw the sun part. Your sun is perfect.
That last image is breathtaking. Very good job.
Vincimus im considering your suggestions and you gave me the idea of adding phobos 
but i really like the space ship crap because it gives the image a little story. Im still struggling with the background and the lights on the dark side of the planet but when those are done ill make a render without the spaceship stuff
update:
- added nice rainbow flares
- added phobos (the thing on the left)
- tweaked colors of planets
- stars are smaller and nebula is a bit different
- spaceship moved and spacestation removed
ps: i like the word breathtaking 
Spend the evening with creating a nearly completly new background (stopped trying to use procedural stuff and took the long road…)
Nice lights whats that donut whole looking thing>
Thats supposed to be Phobos one of mars’s moons. Do an imagesearch for “Phobos” and you’ll see
Just fyi, city lights are barely visible from orbit and they would never be seen with that much sunlight in the image. But I am not saying they aren’t cool.
Nice progress on the image btw.
–
Kevin