Asteroid Colony (Close View)

by Hannu Parviainen
Category: Asteroid Settlements

Description: The asteroid in the picture is very similar to 433 Eros, a close cousin one might say, with major axis of 30 kilometers and minor axes of 10 kilometers. The asteroid has been moved to the cislunar system, and the Moon is shown in the background. A colony is build inside a great crater, born from a huge impact  in the early stages of the solar system. While most of the infrastructure of the colony is hollowed inside the asteroid, the low gravity combined with advanced materials allow for the construction of a main dome with radius of half a kilometer.

Medium/Tools Used: The asteroid, colony and Moon were modeled and textured using Blender. Modifications were made to include the Lommel-Seeliger diffuse scattering model to the Blender-renderer. This was necessary to allow for more realistic rendering of dusty asteroid surfaces.  Different aspects of the picture (shadows, ambient occlusion, etc.) were rendered on separate layers and put together with Celestia-made starry background using Gimp.