Welcome Home

This is a submission for Frontend Challenge v24.09.04, CSS Art: Space.

Inspiration

The "Welcome Home" scene is inspired by the feeling of returning to Earth after a long space journey, drawing from the aesthetics of sci-fi movies.

Demo

Journey

To create the starry background, I used three .stars-layer divs with different translateZ and scale values for a parallax effect:

.stars-layer {
  position: absolute;
  top: -50%;
  left: -50%;
  width: 200%;
  height: 200%;
  animation: rotate 240s linear infinite;
}
.stars-layer-1 {
  transform: translateZ(-300px) scale(2);
}
.stars-layer-2 {
  transform: translateZ(-200px) scale(1.75);
}
.stars-layer-3 {
  transform: translateZ(-100px) scale(1.5);
}

Pseudo-elements with radial-gradient backgrounds create the twinkling stars, animated using keyframes:

.stars-layer::before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  background-size: 350px 350px;
  animation: twinkle 4s infinite ease-in-out;
}

The Earth glow effect is achieved with a .earth-glow div, a radial gradient background, and a blur filter:

.earth-glow {
  position: absolute;
  bottom: -20vh;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 40vh;
  background: radial-gradient(...);
  border-radius: 50% 50% 0 0 / 100% 100% 0 0;
  filter: blur(16px);
}