Blender Hyper Realistic Planet + Breakdown

This is the culmination of over a years worth of experimentation. This was *entirely* done in blender, no terragen, no vray, nothing. I am incredibly happy with the results that I got. I had to rewrite blender's volumetric engine completely so I could render this, which was an interesting experience. Here is an 8k render in full size so you guys can see all the detail: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UeICM7dm_3Fwx7T74XPyWldsV32ZM8dP/view?usp=sharing
most of these cloud layers are mixtures of image textures for masking purposes with procedural textures. it's rather important to incorporate both techniques into these renders for added realism. am happy to answer any and all questions in the comments.

Special thanks to OMAG for the valuable insight and the endless hours of pouring over image data like psychos