Water, its the stuff of life.

The ice terrain was rendered with subsurface scattering, processor intensive but well worth it. With global radiosity for added realism. The planets maps were done in Photoshop and rendered within the same scene in Max. The shaded lower half of the planet is actually picking up light from the terrain because of where it was placed in the scene.

Cray CX1, Adobe Photoshop CS, Autodesk 3DsMax.