1: Were going to create the Live-Earth from 2 images.

Save the sample earth image below.

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And you'll be needing the clouds image which is provided [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] .

2: Open the image of the earth with GIMP and scale it to the size of your cloud-picture, for example 20481024 or 40962048) pixel. Click Image ? Scale

3: Use drag&drop to get the clouds image into your earth image. Then overlap the image with the clouds with the image of the earth.

4: Change the layers mode of this layer to screen.

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5: Combine the two layers into one: Right click in the layers dialogue on the clouds layer select merge down

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6: Filter ? Map ? MapObject

7: Pick Ball and No background.

I disabled the light, but you can try it, let the sun shine ;-)

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8: I took the following for earth rotation: x=0,0; y=5,1;z=15,4

9: After clicking OK the image is generated within seconds. Dont forget to rescale the new image! Use the same size for width and height.

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10: Image ? Autocrop deletes the transparent border

11: (Optional) To generate a spacy picture you need stars! So create a new layer, color it black and click on Filter ? noise ? HSV-noise ;-)

12: And here's your result

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