Ben’s Scale Models of Planetary Systems are designed for maximum scientific accuracy. The latest NASA and ESA images (that I found at the time) were used as textures, all planets and moons are in scale in size, distance and shape (i.e. polar vs. equatorial diameters are accurate). Planets and moons with atmospheres have separate atmosphere geometry with separate cloud layers if necessary.
Special note to animators: If you want to maintain my carefully created scientific accuracy, none of these planets or moons should move at all during any particular animation. You should even restrain your impulse to make cloud layer spheres rotate around their planets. Things in space just don’t move that fast. Also regarding stars in the background: In reality, if you are in space (or even on Earth) are in direct sunlight, and have restricted your iris (or f-stop) to not totally “blow out” all the light areas, then you have already blotted out all of the stars. This is why there are no stars in any of our Apollo moon photos. Then again in the Outer Solar System, sunlight gets dimmer and your modern science fiction audience expects there to be stars in space, so even I wouldn’t complain if there was a handful of bright stars back there somewhere. (Even Ron Howard put stars in space in the otherwise totally accurate, “Apollo 13”)
Lastly, some people have asked if I plan to assemble all these models into one big scale model of the Solar System. The answer is no. Each of these scenes is totally invisible from the others. They are minutes (or hours) apart even at the speed of light. If you want to render the flight in from Interstellar space, you should do it pieces and cut it together in Premier. (Keep in mind your odds are 360 to 2 that your alien ship is not arriving along the plane of the solar system, so it wouldn’t be won’t be passing any other planets on its way to Earth.)
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