Hello: I did my first experiment over the weekend and this is the result. It kind of turned OK but I'm still having trouble with the planet's glow (atmosphere). I tried using some fog and cloud objects over the planet but as you can see the result doesn't look good. It well, looks like a big cloud instead of a glow... Any recomendations? I wouldn't like to add the glow in postrender 'cause it's going to be animated not a still. I made the starfield texture with a shareware application called Universe: http://www.diardsoftware.com/universe.htm It's PC only but with virtual PC you can make it work on the Mac. And the planet textures I found here: http://www.vterrain.org/Imagery/whole_earth.html There's a bunch of links in that page and some great hi-res textures. A whole weekend of searching and experimenting for a 3 second animation, geez.... : ) Thanks guys