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SER: Challenges

These are real planetary images showing some of the challenging things we are trying to reproduce with the Scientific Exoplanets Renderer (SER). They include terrestrial and gas planets weather patterns, rings, atmospheric transparency, liquid surfaces reflections (glints), and surface reconstructions from light curves.


Terrestrial Planets Weather: This is a frame of the Galileo Earth spin movie, a 500-frame time-lapse motion picture showing a 25-hour period of Earth's rotation and atmospheric dynamics. CREDIT: NASA/JPL. [Original Link to Image] Here is the full movie.

Giant Planets Weather: The photo by Voyager I shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot (top) and one of the white ovals than can be seen in Jupiter's atmosphere from Earth. CREDIT: NASA/JPL. [Original Link to Image]

Rings: The Cassini spacecraft captured this natural color view of Saturn almost a month after the planet's August 2009 equinox. The shadow cast on the planet by the rings remains narrow. CREDIT: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. [Original Link to Image]

Atmospheric transparency: Saturn's third-largest moon, Dione, can be seen through the haze of the planet's largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. [Original Link to Image]

Surface Liquids Reflections: This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. CREDIT: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR. [Original Link to Image]

Surface Reconstructions from Light Curves: The never-before-seen surface of the distant planet Pluto is resolved in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope pictures, taken with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Faint Object Camera (FOC) aboard Hubble. CREDIT: Alan Stern (Southwest Research Institute), Marc Buie (Lowell Observatory), NASA and ESA. [Original Link to Image]