been playing with the Blue Marble maps, these are the super high res ones resized to the max I could handle…
just a standard beutyshot, 100% blender
http://mods.firstones.com/gropos/earth.jpg
this one is about 90% blender, I used the push tool in photoshop for the comet.
http://mods.firstones.com/gropos/finaldestination.jpg
so, comments?
Very good earths
Comet is too blocky.
Id use manymanymany particles with small weak halos.
Stefano
The earth looks excellent, but I have to second S68 on the comet issue.
I was looking especially careful at the first earth pic and noticed the atmosphere seems to thin in the upper side…oh whoops…my bad, it was supposed to thin there 
how did you get that nice blue atmosphere?
Actually, planets are teh subject of my next tutorial, which I hope to have done in time to submit it for the Blenderwars contest. 
Nice I especially like the lights on the planet in the second pic.
The planet is awesome! I like it alot! (hmmm tell me how to make one side the day (no light on it) and the night side with light of the cities.!!!) I know it’s texture but how to merge them? photoshop? Make your tutorial fast!!! 
atmosphere in first pic isnt smooth enough… i can see all the individual round halos easily, and especially on the upper right =) they scream "come, see my round haloness!: 
i really like the first picture, did a great job on the planet
second pic, the comet trail is very yucky
finally seeing someone put in light on the dark side of the earth! =D i think it could use more lights unless theres a huge blackout of some sort, but excellent still =)
well…the angle of the second pic your looking at a nice desert and the indian ocean…so unless there are alot of nomadic tribal fires and a few thousand boats out…
as for the lighting on one side and not the other…well…
you just cannot TELL it’l lighting everywhere…
main thing I’ve noticed with peoples planets is they don’t use a very bright light, thus the illumination map shows up on the bright side.
Wow, nice pics
You know when we were discussing Suns on blenderwars I thought the line halos just wouldn’t make a convincing sun, but it looks like you pulled them off pretty well on these pics (unless you didn’t use them… not sure how otherwise you’d get the rays though). I’m still trying to do better on my space scenes… hopefully soon I’ll be able to pull of some nice looking ones like these.
Care to enlighten us on some of the settings you used for the sun?