Stanford Torus

by Joe Strout
http://www.strout.net/info/science/settlements/
Category: Orbital Settlements

Description: A Stanford Torus in the foreground, with another about 12 km away, and a power satellite in the background (7 km away). The radius of each wheel is 830 meters, and the wheel section is 130 meters across. Windows on the central hub are each 1.5 meters high and 4 meters wide. Stars shown are real stars, in their correct positions (though only the brightest appear in this exposure). The mirror of the foreground settlement is not pointed at the sun -- perhaps it is nighttime for these settlers.

Medium/Tools Used: POV-Ray (an open-source rendering application) on Mac OS X, with a hand crafted scene file. The star field comes from astronomer Paul Bourke, used with permission.