realistic earth with atmosphere effect created by simple model and material

you can increase the final render resolution with just replacing the texture by higher resolution map.

the scene contains:

1 earth model with 3 spheres,'ground' ,'cloud' and 'atmosphere'

2 guideCurve that control the light position and direction

3 guideCurve that control the camera

4 five spotlights to simulate the sun illumination

5 render using mentalray with finalgether on(only use FG in Mentalray)

the illumination was tested at all direction of light,no overexposure,and you can get the various brightness of the earth with adjusting the intensity of the spotlight simply

the material of earth is blinn and lambert,no plugin used