Slightly New Look

How I made the new header image

Like it? The old image was created by simple layered compositing in Paint Shop Pro X. The new one was created as a 3D scene in Vue 5 Esprit. To create the 3D models of Io and Venus (which replaces Ganymede in the original image) I got hold of cylindrical projection images and mapped them onto spheres. The background is a Hubble image (a part of the Eagle Nebula, I think). Even the text is a 3D object. The picture here shows the scene from a different camera angle so you can see the spatial arrangement.

On the Ultra setting it took a bit under 4 minutes to render.