Celestia Forums

Ok, I KNOW they are too thin to be rendered.

Now, as Celestia is supposed to give information, I'm wondering if we could not add an almost invisible atmosphere, perhaps only the lower part just visible...
It would be slightly visible once on the surface and at the horizon not in the sky.

Fine, it's not a scientific approach, all arbitrary (color, density) etc, but at least people would learn that THERE IS atmosphere on those bodies, what seems to me much important than misleading them with nothing.

Opinion?

Well,

Some of the rings displayed around planets are also too thin to
actually be seen with the naked eyeball, but we render those do we
not?

I wouldn't mind an indication of these atmospheres. Maybe an option
so that the user can choose?

Take care, Brain-Dead

I once added an atmosphere to Ganymede rather indirectly. I put another (fictional) Jovian moon in the exact same position of Ganymede, with identical orbital parameters and such. The only difference was that this moon had a mesh tag

To prevent it from being visible. Second difference was it was ~ 50 kilometres smaller. I then gave it a ~60 kilometre high atmosphere. It worked rather well. I could be on Ganymede's suface, look out and, even though a faint atmosphere was visible, the stars were too.

(I know the stars wouldn't be visible from the moon, but how about from Ganymede?)

That's a lot of work though, so I only did it for Ganymede and then removed the coding for it later.