Space wallpaper project

[Black Falcon]

Hello, folks.
I was bored, so I messed around with GIMP.
Documents and tutorials helped me getting familiar with some features.
Then I thought "Why not making a wallpaper for my hack?"
And this is how it all started.
My goal of this project is to have a high quality wallpaper of the solar system my hack plays in.

Below you can see the progress of the wallpaper. (People on IRC might have seen the pics already)

A planet I made using this tutorial as a base:
[spoiler=planet][/spoiler]

Made other planets and experimented with textures and glowings.
Also tried to create a ring around the first planet, but I wasn't at all satisfied with the result:
[spoiler=beta 1][/spoiler]

Most recent progress update, improved ring, added another planet, also added variety to the stars:
[spoiler=beta 2][/spoiler]

Ingame space background from my hack. Perspective from the first planet with view to the planet you can see in the very foreground of the wallpaper (yeah I know there's a small tiling error :P):
[spoiler=background][/spoiler]

[spoiler=download references]Planet
Beta 1
Beta 2
background[/spoiler]

Still need to add the galaxy and make the sun look better.
Created this topic mainly to collect as many opinions, critics, tips and hints as possible to improve the quality of the wallpaper.

Still far from done, but progress is steady.
Feel free to use any of them as desktop background  :^_^:

[Parabox]

A little more background noise and a little more fantasy (e.g. flaming stars), and these'd be golden in my opinion.