Gratuitous Rocky Planet

Gratuitous, and shamelessly so.

This started out as a test of a new texture I downloaded this morning (CGTextures, the site I got it from, is an amazing resource; lots of interesting textures) and evolved into the above when I decided to use it to experiment a bit with post processing.

Specifically, I experimented with custom clouds, atmospheric glow (a gremlin I've been trying to squash since I became a space artist), and atmospheric haze.

Altogether, it's all rather subtle, but I think the results speak for themselves. This is, without a doubt, one of, in not the best, planet I've made yet.

Rogue Agent

Hyperion from nearly head on. This image is from the perspective a probe sent to investigate this mysterious object. Hyperion's unique "shockwave" can be seen on the left.

P/2586 E7, commonly called Hyperion, is an enigma. Hyperion behaves like any other Oort Cloud object perturbed from its original orbit (comets), diving in towards Sol before ricocheting back out to deep space, yet it's the size of Earth's moon. The largest object of its type yet observed, debate rages within the scientific community whether it truly qualifies as a comet. Typical of objects of its type, Hyperion outgasses as it approaches Sol. Unlike the more common comets, however, Hyperion's gravity prevents it from forming a traditional coma and tail, as most outgassed material simply collects near the surface, similar to Pluto's summer-time atmosphere. What material that does escape forms a roughly shockwave-shaped cloud, somewhere between a comet's coma and tail and an extreme version of Pluto's atmosphere in behavior.

Though its orbit is "mild", compared to similar objects, at it's closest to the sun, it passes a mere 30 million kilometers from the Earth's orbit, potentially close enough to interact, if weakly, with the Earth itself, should the timing be right. While the current configuration of the solar system puts Earth on the opposite side of Sol during this orbit, it's only a matter of time.

Of equal concern is the as yet unknown event which set Hyperion in motion. Astronomers are still trying to figure out what could fling an object of Hyperion's size towards Sol, and what other effects it may or may not have had.

Gemini

Inspired by the setting of an RP game I'm involved with. It's basically your average mineral-rich hell-hole. It rains sand, if that says anything.

Blanc

This is the result of some messing around in preparation of the next picture in this world-building project of mine. Specifically, it's a mockup of the Earth and Sol from somewhere in the vicinity of the Earth-Moon L4 Lagrange Point. The moon isn't visible because it's simply too far away from the Earth to fit within the image. However, at this scale, it would be about 13 pixels big; barely big enough to show a crescent.

I thought it looked presentable, so I decided to post it.