This animation is fairly typical in CG, an approach to the Earth from space. It took some trial and error to get the atmospheric edge to glow convincingly. The earth and cloud images are spherically mapped to seperate objects.

The Earth and Clouds, Atmosphere, and Star Background were each rendered out to their own file. In After Effects, the stars were layered to the background, with the Atmosphere lying above, and the planet last. Each layer respected the Alpha channel of the layer above it.

The stars were created using the Random Dots shader for the diffuse attribute. This was applied to a huge sphere that completly enveloped the scene. The sphere was parented to the camera and thus moved anywhere the camera did, creating an illusion of infinitely distant stars. While the stars move with the camera, they do not rotate as the camera does, thus the slight shift as the camera pans.