56 hour render time on this, 46 minutes just for the photon map - a record.
I used a saved photon map from a much smaller test render.  It's hard to
experiment
when the render speed drops under 1 PPS.  My biggest mistake was not
setting the finish of the background/foreground to ambient 0 and letting
the sky sphere light it, which, combined with the media, led to a washed
out appearance.  The projected caustics were a suprise at this resolution.
In small test renders they looked quite soft, not at all like the hot-spots
you see here.  I hand bounded the sphere with a sphere the same size the
visible one was cut from, but did so after I had applied the texture, which
may have hurt rather than helped the render time.  Also, I neglected to
enable media in radiosity.  Radiosity has so many contols to tweak I am
beginning to believe I should start with it first, and get the scene to
look right before adding media and photons.  I'm planning to use this as
the center sphere of an armillary I am designing.  Comments?

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