It is a beautiful picture anyways, I am glad you posted! (: The challenge is every month, so there will always be another chance, I can't wait to see what the next one will be. genny

This is great, I love the way the light look circular...wonderful job...Sharen

Great job, too bad you had technical difficulties. but as the others say there is always next month...

Thanks all. I actually liked this contest in particular. Some of the more technical difficulties came about because of VUE's lighting mechanism. The way vue's atmosphere is set up, if you want nighttime, you have to turn down fog and haze. Nice, but if you want volumetric sun/moon light, without using other lights or special effects, you need more fog and haze. It's a catch 22. So if you want hazy moonlight or something like it, you have to use special effects. If I turn up the fog and haze on this scene it turns into daytime, even if the fog and haze are dark colored.... interesting. Next there is the ol' light beam in a cylinder. That is what I used in this scene, but it started coming up dark blue at the center for some reason..... So, at 12:30 A.M. U.S. Eastern time, I called it quits. But before that, I also tried a volumetric shader in the cylinder. When I did that, everything turned yellow, since the camera is in one end of the cylinder. Not pretty. Oh well, maybe Vue 5, will have some improvements on this set up..... Anyway, it was still fun, and I will continue to push the limits!! Thanks again.