Lately i've been in a journalistic mood when it comes to space.

My previous one was about Mars being close to Earth, and now this one is about the asteroid coming to pay a visit.

I always enjoy discussing astronomy with people, and introducing them to the wonders of the cosmos.

Between Mars and Jupiter, there is an asteroid belt. Asteroids are pieces of rock that are left over from the formation of our solar system. Sometimes, the massive gravity of Jupiter will pull some of these asteroids away from the belt.
In august of 2003, astronomers noticed the asteroid 2003 QQ47. It is not rare that asteroids lurk in our solar system, but this one ws thought to have a 1 in 900.000 chance of colliding with Earth, and because it was a lot bigger than the regular ones, this raised some concern. However, further studies of its orbit and path ruled out the posibility of 2003 QQ47 colliding with Earth. In fact, they believe that there is a 1 in 2.2 million chances that an asteroid will hit Earth within the next century.

By the time i started working on this project, there was some concern, and i would see people bitching and getting all catastrophic about an asteroid that would smack us in 11 years. So i decided to make one of these scenes, because i dont really have one in my gallery, and the thought always lurked my mind.

Enough of that, and lets get down to the technical aspects of this, which is probably what most of you want to know.

I used photoshop and 3d studio max for this. However, unlike my other works, i used 3d studio max only for the asteroid, and not the planet. Yes indeed, i made the planet and the rest in photoshop.
My favorite part about the planet is that the clouds were made out of a picture of a rock. The good news: Im considering making a tutorial on how to make textures, because its probably the question that i get asked the most. This would come in handy to lots of people who dont have 3d studio max, and to people who just wanna see some filter action

The nebulas were made using..........pictures of clouds, and airbrushing. I think they are OK. A lot better than i expected, and a lot better than my previous ones (please note that this is my 2nd attempt and approach at making nebulas, so the quality might not be as high as one would expect)

Dont even bother bitching about the lens flare. Its staying there, and you better believe it. That freaking sun took me 2 days to make, i got very frustrated because i couldnt get a nice blend between the reds and blues, and the flare wouldnt look right. I finally settled for this classy-looking one.
I made it red because i wanted to prove myself both wrong, and right.

I wanted to prove myself wrong, because in one of my deviations in june, i mentioned: "At first i tried to have the sun emit a red glow, but after hours of frustration, I realized that for earth, the only way to go is BLUE."

And i wanted to prove myself right, because i believe that if i really want something done, i can do it.

However that doesnt look like Earth, simply because the cloud pattern is different, but i wanted to try out a red sun with a blue planet close to it. I think it came out quite nice.

Special thanks to 2 wonderful deviants:

*alphaosiris: for making me realize that the asteroid was too dark and hard to see.

+olya: for teaching me how to compose. Normally this wouldve taken me twice as long because i would try out too many compositions that would look awful, but now she taught me and i can focus on the graphics themselves rather than the composition.