8-20-2022 Hi Alec, Thanks for the clarification. Could data from astronomical observations be analyzed through the subtle and sensitive mechanisms of the pictorial displays by Mathematica? Using Mathematica would be very novel for exoplanetary astronomy.

Hi Paul, thanks for your feedback!

Unfortunately, this approach is limited to creating the illusion of an object lit by one or more light sources in a way that can be drawn to a screen. Both the screen projection step and physically based shading make simplifying assumptions about light that ignore its wave properties and the effects of gravity. While this works well enough for rendering human-scale scenes, it would be a poor model to use in astronomical contexts like exoplanet detection.