All these worlds...

[Dune]

Very nice worlds!

[raymoh]

A new render of my "Red Worlds - Series":
This is an imaginary, desert-like landscape on GJ 1061 c, the second planet of the red dwarf star GJ 1061, about 12 light years away from earth.
Planet c is a "Super-Earth", i.e. it is slightly heavier and larger than the Earth, thus has a slightly higher gravity and probably a denser atmosphere (if it has one). The planet moves at the inner edge of the habitable zone around its host star and receives about one third more radiation than the Earth from the Sun, mainly infrared light. In the visible part of the spectrum, however, it is much dimmer on this planet than on Earth. On a cloudless day in areas close to the terminator (like on my render) it will be about as bright for humans as on earth shortly after sunset.  Thereby the red dwarf appears about 5 times bigger in the sky than the sun from earth. It is unpleasant to stare directly into the big sun disk, but not as dangerous as on earth. The landscape is bathed in a distinct yellow-red light. In the shining sun disk you can faintly see some big sunspots.
GJ 1061 c always turns the same side to its sun. Due to the strongly warmed day side and the cold night side of the planet, heavy winds are constantly blowing in areas close to the terminator.
I tried to capture such a scene of an upcoming storm in my render. Bioluminescent life forms partially cover the ground like a carpet.

The image is a composition of three different renders and some post-processing until I could recreate roughly the (light) conditions I had in mind.

[raymoh]

A new Space Art render:

A hypothetical habitable planet moving on a stable but irregular orbit around two pairs of suns. The year (and the seasons) are not always the same, because the orbit has a certain random character, caused by the different gravitational forces of the two pairs of Suns. The planet is subject to extreme climatic variations, from ice ages to long periods of drought, depending on where it is on its orbit around the suns.

[raymoh]

Here again a piece of space art. A little science and a little fiction:

Titanus Secundus:

A caprice of nature:
A far away moon which physical parameters are within 10% the same as Titan, biggest moon of Saturn.
This moon is orbiting not a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn, but an ice giant like Uranus or Neptune.
After a brief methane rain shower the sky is clearing up, revealing for a moment the hardly visible silhouette of the host planet, before the hydrocarbon clouds are covering the sky again.
The reddish dust that rains down from the sky and covers almost the entire surface of this region like snow are Tholins: dusty hydrocarbon compounds that are created high up in the atmosphere, in the interaction of solar radiation and atmospheric components. Among other things, they are regarded as precursors of life.

Terragen 4 and Pixelmator

[sboerner]

Another excellent, imaginative image. Your descriptions really show how much research and thought goes into each one. Took me a while to find the gas giant, but it's perfect, almost not-there. Keep up the great work.

[raymoh]

Charon Rising:

A hypothetical landscape on Pluto, freely interpreted according to the data of the "Horizon" probe.
The title "Charon Rising" is actually misleading: Since both dwarf planets are in tidally locked or "bounded" rotation with each other, Charon will never rise further from Pluto than visible in the image (at exactly this observed place on Pluto's surface!) for all eternity.
By the way, the sun is still depicted too large, it would be nothing else than the brightest star in Pluto's sky, no longer perceptible as a disk for the naked eye but about 300 times brighter than the full moon. So I took the artistic freedom to depict the sun in a more recognizable way.

[Kadri]

Looks nice.

[luvsmuzik]

Oh Boy! Great one!

I am seeing some banding in your night sky, which I do not mind so much as it adds to the eeriness of the image, but is that an after-edit effect? What was your AA on that one?

[raymoh]

Yes, in a way it is: The "banding" is a direct consequence of reducing the original image to a "web-friendly" low-resolution ipg file. The original is a smooth, high-resolution 12.4 MB TIFF file without any "banding". The render has an AA of 6.

[Hannes]

Very nice and cinematic!! Cool!!

[masonspappy]

That looks pretty darn nice!

[Jo Kariboo]

Very nice series!

[raymoh]

Thank you folks! Here's another one:

A young earth-like planet in its early Proterozoic era, like the earth some 2.5 billion years ago.
This planet orbits the larger partner of a double star system: a young, sunlike star and a more distant red dwarf.
A panoramic view of a vast plateau, eroded by wind and rain.The young sun burns hot from an almost lavender colored sky. The red dwarf star is visible as a reddish bright star even during the day.
An oxygen-enriched atmosphere is developing trough the evolution and ,,explosion" of early lifeforms capable of photosynthesis, similar to cyanobacterias and algae on earth: sign of a convergent evolution.
The shallow ponds are created by rain, mostly drying out and filling again in irregular intervals. They are full of this lifeforms, encouraged by this environmental conditions to leave the water, so as the heavy tides caused by the big moon do at the shores of the primordial oceans. Nevertheless it takes another 2 billion years for lifeforms to permanently conquer the land masses of this planet...

Rendered in Terragen 4.4; Reworked with Pixelmator

[raymoh]

From my archives:

Meet Hellhouse:
A primordial rocky Super-Earth in a close, tidally locked orbit around a young Red Dwarf. Compared with this planet, Venus is a paradise! A dense hydrogen- and helium-enriched and high-pressured atmosphere refracts, scatters and absorbs most of the light of the Red Dwarf.
Here, at the substellar point, the atmosphere and the surface are overheated by the star's radiation and unpredictably flare-eruptions. The landscape is mostly melted, a constant and chaotic lava flow, interrupted by some rocky peaks also on the verge of melting. This lava is very viscous, almost ,,solid", due the atmospheric pressure and the high gravity of this Super-Earth. So the landscape is slowly but permanently changing its aspect. The atmosphere under the substellar point is a constant hurricane-like storm. Sooner or later (in geological terms) the dense atmosphere will mostly dissipate due the star's radiation and maybe leave behind a more ,,earth-like" planet.

[raymoh]

A completely hypothetical but plausible view of a landscape in the twilight zone of "TRAPPIST-1 e", one of seven really existing planets around a faint red dwarf star, about 40 light years away from Earth. The planet is moving in the habitable zone around its star. If the Earth-like rocky planet has an atmosphere and water, it could harbor life. TRAPPIST-1 e orbits its host star in bounded rotation, i.e. it always shows the same side to its sun. Thus a local "day" is as long as a local "year". There is actually only a hot day side and a cold night side, which never change.
The picture shows us the "moderate" zone around the Terminator, the day and night border. Nevertheless there are probably strong winds here, which make life more difficult. The rocky ground is covered by a (hypothetical) bioluminescent life form, similar to our lichens. Cloud formations constantly move across the sky, shone by the dim reddish light of the red dwarf just behind us on the horizon. In the already dark starry sky two more planets of the system are visible: TRAPPIST-1 f and g.

Terragen 4.4.44 and Pixelmator Pro 1.71