Animated version of the cover of 'The Icarus Hunt' by Timothy Zahn. Original painting cover by Paul Youll (Its really nice when publishers actually bother to credit the cover painters).
I really like this book, I bought a used copy at a book sale somewhere and read it repeatedly as a teenager. The scifi/suspense format Zahn used here, and in his Quadrail book (also favorites) really works for me.
I've remade the whole composition in 3d in blender. the planet used a nasa photo of mercury, the star field is a fractal, all the other textures are procedural.
the title font is ITC Quorum Bold. At first I thought they used some condensed version that isnt available anymore, but on closer examination I realized that the letters were just stretched vertically in Photoshop to mimic a narrower spacing.
When I googled the title looking for a scan of the cover, I was super happy to find that after 25 years, Zahn recently published a sequel, which is not something I had expected to ever see.