Each of the heavenly bodies will be spheres with equirectangular textures mapped onto their surface. I recommend you download the texture images now. These files are included with the downloads for this book--SolarSystemTextures.zip--which contains individual texture files, named mercury.png, venus.png, and so on. The source of most of these images is http://www.solarsystemscope.com (Pluto's is https://celestiaproject.net/ and the source of Saturn rings is http://alpha-element.deviantart.com/art/Stock-Image-Saturn-Rings-393767006). For example, earth.png looks like this:
We also have a chance to throw some real science into ...
