this is a WIP render of a scene i am working for class just looking to see what others think
Not bad.
Something doesnt look right though… not sure what either…
Maybe it is the transitions from the stars to the solid black earth? or maybe the sharp transition from light to dark halves? r maybe there is too much stars…
I hope you are using a reference, if not google for earth.
To me something doesnt seem right though.
take out the stars on the left side of the earth 
they are blocked by the sun
I don’t know of an easy way to fix it, but the clouds seem very flat on the surface of the earth. Also, I don’t know if it’s very realistic, but a very slight, blue glow around the earth would make it look like it had more atmosphere. Maybe try making a second sphere with a lot of vertexes, just slightly bigger than the earth, and give it a mostly transparent blue halo material with the minneart shader.
Give the earth a normal map, and a specular map. Only the water needs to really shine. Also soften the stars. They shouldn’t be a flat circle.
I think this will look cool after a bit of work. After all this is just your first post on this.
Yea do what afalldorf said. Which is basicly what bobrandolph said.
It looks pretty good! But if you want to further enhance the realism try adding another slightly larger sphere around the current one with a ramp shader and Ztransp to simulate an atmosphere.
Ok now the dark side of the earth is way too light imo, oh and add the atmosphere afalldorf was talking about
yea a little to light. You should make a star texture with gimp(i don’t know if you already did. You just need to make a bunch of static and use lightness and contrast to make it look more like stars. Theres a tut for it somewhere on google. Its really simple you don’t need any gimp experience.
There just aren’t enough background stars. The earth is a little bright as DDD said.
Check out this sight for normals and speculars for the earth to give it a more real and not so flat look.