Thanks for the complements, everyone!

I'm still far away from a perfect render of earth.  The entire surface is
reflective (not just oceans).  Land features are a combination of "sphere"
and "bump_map", which is not ideal in modelling a realistic surface.  It
seems that calculations for surfaces below the atmosphere start and end
about 600 kilometers above the surface, giving the effect that the surface
is the same as viewed from space as viewed from the ground.  I used another
map to simulate the "faded" effect the atmosphere has on the surface.  And
to save time rendering on a 400 MHz system, I didn't do any anti-aliasing.

Anyway, I still seek solutions to these... will keep practicing.

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