Oolite Bulletins

Could the planet image on F7 mimic the ambient level in use, rather than the default?

Ho-hum! Not possible, or not desirable/worth the effort? If the latter, is it something which could be tweaked by a dumb pilot?

I guess your real problem is that the rendering for the "target system" is using the "local system" ambient lighting, from what I can tell (very noticeable when using the atmosphere shader). I think the code for the mini planet display is not getting all the information needed for the shader in a consistent manner.
EDIT: Well, it seems that the what I mentioned above is no more true. But the atmosphere shader of all the systems you're looking at considers the current distance to your local planet (so it won't render the atmosphere if you're too far to see it in your local system). Also there seems to be another issue too with the way this is rendered -- that is if you first press F7 on another system than the local -> no atmo, switch to local -> atmo, switch back to the previous -> atmo too.

<scratches head - grins>