This is what I've been up to the last few days. Well this and being sick. Just getting over the killer flu. Have some space and another totally random Apo render put to good use. The quality on the file is kinda bad because the original won't fit anywhere but the print site where I sell these. So I peeled off a low quality jpeg for posting here.

Looks really amazing as all your work does. Just one thing, what are the sparkly bits on the planet supposed to be?

That's where people party all night.

Ah, I see - it's teenage town

Yep, it's all night owls. That and I'm still working on making planet city lights look more natural.

Yeah, I think that's important. House lights tend to be yellowish though I don't know what that looks like from space. I would need some kind of photo reference to judge.

They are, in the original file, they're yellowish. It's not showing them nearly as good in this version though. I think if anything they should be slightly more orange, but not any darker. I also think they should not cover whole continents.

Looks great!
Those planet light must be entire cities ablaze, with light like that being noticeable far out into space.

Wow, cool ek22.

Nice star-field and lighting effects. I think the vortex looking clouds around the planet are cool. On the downside I think the planet looks too black and some visible weather patterns might add a nice effect, but on the whole it's good.

Thanks for all the comments. I think I'll be spending some more time in the near future working on my planet skills. That's been on my plate for a while. I want to do more things with close ups of suns too, so there's still lots of room for improvement.

Another wonderful piece of space art.