I was wondering what ideas have been considered for doing comet trails. Assuming you (Chris) get around to it, are you going to go for an actual particle system or some animated model that grows and shrinks over time with maybe an animated texture?
I was also thinking that whatever effect you come up with could also be used for pulsars/black hole jets, which would be cool to see. If you were able to get animated textures I would like to try maybe an extrasolar gas giant with lightning, too.
btw (to all), I'm working on some more gas giant textures, hoping to add some variety to all those redundant extrasolars. After that I was thinking of making some smaller hypothetical planets and moons for the extrasolars, probably going loosely by Lynette Cook's idea's (http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/space.html) and maybe getting some textures for the space stations and hubble if no one beats me to it (speaking of which, just how well does UVW mapping cross over?). Anyway, I'll post again when I have something worth showing.