Using bigben's Angle from a reference vector setup

[Dune]

I don't think a surface layer will do (unless you meant something else). What you need is a a very high cloud layer at very high altitude, with indeed a stretched Y component, a good warp, and some appropriate colors from an extra PF into direct light input (or final coverage). Plus a fade/fuzzy zone by altitude (distribution shader, or distance shader with a camera in earth's center), or another method.

[Stormlord]

Stormlord and WAS, thank you for the links to star maps... I just found a 32k version here:
http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/astronomy/

Thank you for the link, I got the map from Paul in 2012 and yes they're huge but I prefer the NASA Maps.
They have a 16K Version which is good for me and they provide the constellations ect. as well :-)

The only thing which they do not have is a star map with only the stars of the constelaltions.
But I made one myself.

If you have the computer power and if you're willing to programm your own star maps, then you can give it a try with "Processing 3.3".
Links are here...

Language
http://processing.org/
http://processing.org/learning/

Tycho Star catalogue
http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?target=http&cat=I%2F259&;

Star colours
http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/dir3/starcolor/

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho-2_Catalogue

STORMLORD

[Stormlord]

I created a few maps in 2017 with Processing but ended up with a maximum size of 12288 x 6144.
Then my RAM was full... lol... (I still use my Intel Quadcore Pentium with 2.67Ghz with 7GB RAM)


Star Map created with Processiong 3.3 (Tycho)


And the same with Galactical Coordinates.

STORMLORD

[Stormlord]

Luckily I found in my archive the Source Code which I have used to create these maps in Processing and further info's for you.
The files which you can download containing .exe files. These are a compilation of the original web sites. Just start them like a progamm, rest is self explaining.

But before you can use it, you have to download the star data catalogues and cobine them into one single file!
My original file has 501 MB (in which all single files has been combined into one big file). So it's too big to upload it for you, sorry...

Please see the links above and the attachments.

STORMLORD

[Kadri]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[Ariel DK]

@hydrodigger welcome to the forum! and nice to see somebody working on this kind of scenes again  
Did you check this one? https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20037.msg197502.html#msg197502
Is an oldy version of my setup for clouds, but it will be a good start if you don't want to waste too much time in the clouds lol
About the ionosphere, it should be a very tiny layer (like 10 mts depth), with a 90 km altitude. the tricky question is his luminance and density. i gonna search the file when i back to home later

[WAS]

Luckily I found in my archive the Source Code which I have used to create these maps in Processing and further info's for you.
The files which you can download containing .exe files. These are a compilation of the original web sites. Just start them like a progamm, rest is self explaining.

But before you can use it, you have to download the star data catalogues and cobine them into one single file!
My original file has 501 MB (in which all single files has been combined into one big file). So it's too big to upload it for you, sorry...

Please see the links above and the attachments.

STORMLORD

These are fun and all, but they're really designed for catalogs and star mapping, not star gazing visuals. These only include stars, without any diffusion from their light or nebulae/galaxies. They aren't realistic in scenes. No offense. They would be good for leveled versions for viewing through atmospheres where only the brightest stars remain in underexposed imagery.

Even with a high exposure shot with auroras, not too many stars are going to show through that close to Earth.

I see this program used in my astronomy group to add back circular stars to composites and tracking anomalies through exposure times.

[WAS]

I don't think a surface layer will do (unless you meant something else). What you need is a a very high cloud layer at very high altitude, with indeed a stretched Y component, a good warp, and some appropriate colors from an extra PF into direct light input (or final coverage). Plus a fade/fuzzy zone by altitude (distribution shader, or distance shader with a camera in earth's center), or another method.

Oh I misunderstood. Thought we were talking about the corona thingy.

A series of surface layers with altitude cutoffs corresponding to the altitude layers of aurora colour effects can be used as the colours.

Here's a rough example. It's not fun playing around with the altitudes and fuzzy zones, and unfortunately these alts aren't realistic I don't think.

[Kadri]

I think it looks quite close when you do a search with "aurora from space" ?

[Dune]

Yes, looks good. You have to get used to working with huge numbers (the e) indeed.

[WAS]

Yes, looks good. You have to get used to working with huge numbers (the e) indeed.

More TGs falloff issue. Hard to get clean fades. Could achieve this with the corona because it's density is so low it hides the issue.