I recently downloaded this program called XPlanet that creates really cool pictures of planets in our solar system.
Apparently this program can create a wide variety of simulated pictures of our solar system as long as you have texture maps of the planets that you want to render and a working knowledge of the program's parameters, which are numerous.
Here is the command that I used to generate the image above (although I used a separate program to resize the image afterward):
xplanet.exe -tmpdir . -output xplanet.jpg -save_desktop_file -longitud
e -75.692298 -latitude 40.006544 -num_times 1 -body earth
The program defaults to creating a new image every few minutes. This might be useful for a screen saver or somthing, but I have set it to render to my desktop wallpaper directly.
If you want to render different planets (like Mars or Jupiter), you will need to download additional texture maps. Some of these are available through the XPlanet web site.
The cloud overlay is a separate download that makes the rendered image much more interesting. It can use the current planetary cloud cover as an overlay if you download it before you render the image. The creator of the software has a script that regenerates the cloud images three times daily.
