That artifact is actually pretty neat! No idea what might be causing it though...
I'm afraid that I really can´t help you much more as you reach this point. All I know is that, with the proper work and research, Away3D is perfectly capable of producing what you want to create, just get the proper answers from the proper people in this list. Suggestion A) Have you considered using Away3dLite for this? If you haven't, I'd recommend you to check it out, it would allow you much higher performances. Be sure to be aware of the feature limitations in it before starting though, it does perform much faster than Away3D, but has less features. Suggestion B) I think your app should have a scaling filter parameter. In the mathematical model of the planets you have a certain scaling. The numbers used in rendering should be independent from this BUT related to the numbers of the mathematical model through a given, arbitrary factor. I dont think that this should have implications on the actual rendering, I just think that it would make it esthetically tidier and make you feel you have control over these scales on your implementation.
