Mars Dying

[treddie]

A planet in the midst of losing the struggle.

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[fleetwood]

Nice, I see you got the fine sand grain going. Like the sculpted looking otherworld clouds.

[Dune]

What struggle is it losing? Livability (is that a word?)? Getting hot because it's getting too near a sun? Then I would loose the clouds and make it all extremely bright.

[treddie]

Hi Fleetwood > Yah...Finally got the clouds and sand grain working.  I'm like a perpetual newbie! 

What struggle is it losing?

Hi Dune!  It's Mars back when it still had an atmosphere that could form clouds.  But that atmosphere and the surface are drying up, very little precipitation and most life is now gone, replaced by sand dunes.

Thanks to Luc, Dune, Fleeetwood and Kadri for all your help!

[Kadri]

Nice. I like the composition especially.
Subjective but have you tried it with softer clouds?

[bobbystahr]

What struggle is it losing? Livability (is that a word?)? Getting hot because it's getting too near a sun? Then I would loose the clouds and make it all extremely bright.

Agree..

[treddie]

Your softening up the clouds idea got me thinking about a couple of things...The atmosphere is losing density as its nitrogen and oxygen get blown away by the solar wind.  So the atmosphere cannot hold as much moisture and the clouds cannot get as dense as on Earth, and the sky color goes towards a redder hue.

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In that case, I think the sky color should be darker than it is here, too.

[Dune]

Nice idea, now I understand your thinking. A more reddish sky would be nice indeed.

[treddie]

Sky somewhat darker, but I left the color sort of steel blue, not quite violet.  The clouds are a little less dense now and softer.

I thought of putting in a dead tree trunk or something but then decided to just leave it all understated.

And two moons in the sky now.  Deimos and Phobos are so small, they would just look like bright stars, anyway:

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[Dune]

Cool, and quite an improvement.

[treddie]

Thanks!

[bobbystahr]

Cool, and quite an improvement.

Agree

[treddie]

Meanwhile...On the other end of the cosmological timescale:

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The moral of the story?
If the lack of a magnetic field doesn't get you, a red giant will.

[Dune]

Very nice, elegantly simple.

[Kadri]

Nice