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	Asteroid Passing Jupiter
	This image is an example of a “quick-and-dirty” rendering consisting of three components generated by three separate software programs and then composited together. The gaseous nebula and star background is from DarkTree Textures, a procedural texture generation program from DarkSim. The planet is a high-resolution map of Jupiter’s visible surface (actually the cloud tops) wrapped around a sphere and rendered in trueSpace. Finally, the pocked and cratered surface of the asteroid in the foreground was generated in Bryce. Some care was required to make sure the lighting was similar in trueSpace and Bryce, but other than that the creation of this simple image was very straightforward.

	Jupiter and Io
	Here’s an even simpler image, with both Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io rendered in trueSpace using high-resolution planetary maps. I elected to leave the background solid black here rather than make it “starry.” In general, a person viewing bright planetary objects such as these from close up would not be able to see background stars anyway, because the pupils of his or her eyes would be relatively tiny due to the brightness of the nearby objects.

	Ruby Nova
	Somewhere deep in the outer reaches of a distant galaxy, a star goes nova. An expanding sphere of superheated plasma surges outward from the dying star, leaving behind turbulent clouds of hotter gases in its wake. The scene is viewed from above the surface of one of the moons of a Jupiter-type planet in orbit around the star. The moon’s orbit is inclined to the planet’s equator—here it is above the “northern” hemisphere. Soon both the planet and its moon—as well as all of the other objects in this stellar system—will be consumed by the nova explosion. The surface of the moon is a DarkTree procedural texture, as are the gas clouds around the star.

	Hot Planet
	The surface of a planet in a double star system is likely to be a very hostile place indeed. The complexities of such a planet’s orbital motions around its two primaries would very likely prevent any life from ever developing, and the planet would probably be harsh and barren. This image shows the view from an earth-sized planet in a stellar system consisting of a red giant and a main-sequence star. The planet’s surface is dry, baked and lifeless. The cycles of heat and cold as the planet moves in its complex orbit, combined with wild atmospheric winds generated from diurnal heat flux variations, tend to erode any mountains that may arise from tectonic forces. Low mesa-like formations are the only significant geological formations that ever form.

	Alien Planet Moon Mission
	Okay, so this image is just an excuse to recycle some old trueSpace models in a new setting. Here’s the story. Space explorers—not necessarily “humanoid”—from a distant planet elsewhere in the galaxy have managed to make the first landing on their planet’s moon. The moon’s orbit is very close to the home planet, here seen hanging in the sky above the landing site. It is so close, in fact, that it barely escapes being torn apart from tidal forces due to differential gravity. Were it very much closer—inside “Roche’s limit”—it would have broken apart and formed a system of rings around the planet. Reflected light from the moon illuminates the dark side of the planet and forms a highlight in the ocean Assume that the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe. Thus, engineering problems such as spaceflight and atmospheric entry are likely to have similar solutions regardless of where they are developed. For example, any technological society will inevitably conclude that a sphere is the best shape to carry propellant in the absence of atmosphere. Similarly, a body streamlined for efficient flight in atmosphere must obey certain common physical principles. Here I have used the departure tanks from the von Braun-Bonestell moonship and a Bonestell-type streamlined rocket to construct this very hypothetical extraterrestrial spacecraft. The gas clouds in the background are from DarkTree Textures, the moon’s surface is from Bryce (with a lot of tweaking), and the planet and spacecraft are both trueSpace renderings.

Copyright © 1998 - 2006 by Terry L. Sunday. All rights reserved. Please ask permission before using any of these images for any reason.
Some of the background images for these works are available in the public domain.