Astrocraft: Realistic Night Skies

A configurable astronomy mod that adds a realistic night sky with real life stars, planets and much more. This mod is for those who want to explore the stars while playing minecraft.

Summary of Features

• Real life stars and constellations
• Galaxies and Nebulae
• Planets, moons, asteroids and comets
• Shooting Stars and Meteor Showers
• Zoomable spyglass, usable as a telescope
• Realistic / Seasonal sun and moon positions
• Rare astronomical events (Eclipses, and more)
• Fully Customizable, custom solar systems supported

If you are only interested in simply replacing the stars and none of the mod's other features, check out Astrocraft: Lite (Fabric and Neoforge).

Real Life Stars and Constellations

Astrocraft replaces Minecraft's randomly generated stars, with those from real life. Stars come in a range of magnitudes and colors, with bright red stars like Betelgeuse or Arcturus, or more blueish stars like Rigel.

Most stars are so dim, you need a spylass to see them. Zooming in on the Milky Way on a moonless night, you can see thousands of little stars.

As the night progresses, stars revolve around a point in the north sky, marked by Polaris and the Little Dipper.

Galaxies, Clusters and Nebulae

Astrocraft also adds different types of deepsky objects, including:

• Open and Globular Clusters, like the Pleiades (M45).
• Nebulae like the Orion Nebula (M42), or Ring Nebula (M57)
• Galaxies like Andromeda (M31) or Whirlpool (M51)
• A subtle Milky Way skybox

For these objects, you need dark skies and high altitude to see well.

Shooting Stars and Meteor Showers

Occasionally, you can see streaks of light across the sky. Most meteors belong to a meteor shower, where they radiate from a specific point in the sky. The perseids for example, occur in summer, and radiate from around Perseus or Cassiopeia. Some meteor showers can produce Meteor Storms.

Zoomable Spyglass

Use your mouse's scroll wheel, to zoom in or out, up to 500x magnification. The spyglass works like a telescope, it lets you see objects that are otherwise too dim.

It works best at high altitudes such as on a mountain top, and when the sky is fully dark, not lit by the moon.

Planets and the Solar System

Astrocraft by default, adds every planet, along with many other solar system objects. Planets appear similar to bright stars, but often vividly colored to stand out. Unlike stars, these objects move as the days go by, in realistic keplerian orbits. Positions of these planets in the sky are calculated from their orbital parameters (fully configurable), while also taking into account earth's own orbit. Planets also vary in magnitude (brightness), being brightest at opposition.

Zooming in to a planet, it starts to looks less like a star, and more like the vanilla MC moon. Planets have different textures, Jupiter having bands, Venus being mostly featureless. Inferior planets (Venus and Mercury), also show phases like the moon, based on the direction of the sun.

Some planets are orbited by moons, for example: Jupiter and the Galilean moons. Moons often have short orbital periods, meaning you can see them move over a single night.

Below is a table of the major planets (except Earth), with descriptions of their ingame appearances:

There are also over 100 asteroids (or dwarf planets), usually orbiting the sun around the asteroid belt. These appear like dim stars, usually requiring a spyglass to see. Subsequent observations may show them slowly moving through the star background.

Comets, which have visible tails and sometimes become very bright as they approach the sun. They have high eccentricity orbits.

Realistic / Seasonal Sun and Moon

Throughout the year, the sun moves relative to the stars, traveling through the zodiac. This determines which stars can be seen at a given time.

Unlike in vanilla minecraft, where the sun, moon and stars all pass overhead, they will now be tilted by the latitude set in the configuration (30°N by default). Additionally, the sun's angle also changes seasonally throughout the year. This causes the day and night to change in length, longer days in summer, longer nights in winter. Setting latitude to 90° or -90° in the configuration will simulate polar day / night.

If you have either serene seasons or fabric seasons installed, Astrocraft automatically syncs to their season cycles.

The Moon

This mod adds moonlight, which lights up the night during a full moon, however may outshine certain objects in the sky. At a new moon, or when the moon is down, the night can be very dark, but it is best for astronomy.

The vanilla MC moon, regardless of phase, is permanently fixed opposite the sun. In Astrocraft, the moon moves independently of the sun. As a result, it is often still up during the day.

Eclipses

A rare astronomical event, the Lunar Eclipse, occurs when a full moon coincides with the moon crossing the ecliptic. A shadow engulfs the moon and turns it red and dark, dimming moonlight for only a few minutes.

During a new moon, the moon can partially or fully cover the sun, completely blocking out the sunlight. This causes the sky to go dark and stars to come out, just like the night. Other astronomical objects, such as Mercury and Venus can also eclipse the sun, they look like small sunspots.

Customization

If you have mod menu installed you can open the configuration menu, otherwise edit the config file at: "config/astrocraft.json".

Here you can toggle stars or planets off, disable star color, add your own stars and much more. The main option affecting performance is "Magnitude Limit", reduce this if you need to.

Multiplayer Compatibility

Other players on multiplayer worlds with Astrocraft installed will see the same stars and planets as you. However, this won't be the case if you change certain settings, such as "year length" or planets' orbits. Keep this in mind, if you are viewing the night sky with friends.

Constellations

Astrocraft can help you see constellations in the stars by drawing them in the sky. Enable the "Show Constellations" option under the "Overlays" category. It will now show you which stars make up each constellation.

Planets

In the "Planet" category of the menu, you will find a list of all the planets added by the mod. Here you can edit the appearance and orbit of any planet, including earth. Each planet has a list of moons, these can be edited the same way as any planet. You can also add new planets and moons in the config.

Earth is not the only planet you can observe the solar system from, Set "Observing Location" to any planet, moon, asteroid, or even nearby stars. This affects the position of the stars and other planets in the sky. It also allows you to get a close up view of nearby celestial bodies (like Jupiter from Europa).

Compatibility

• BadOptimizations: This can be fixed by setting "enable_sky_angle_caching_in_worldrenderer" to "false" in the BadOptimizations config file at "config/badoptimizations.txt".
• AdditionZ: Disable "North Star".
• Shaders may have visual issues
• fabricSkyboxes

Use Sinytra Connector if you want to use with forge or neoforge.

If the mod breaks after updating, try resetting everything in the config, or delete the config file. Don't report shader issues.

A configurable astronomy mod that adds a realistic night sky with real life stars, planets and much more. This mod is for those who want to explore the stars while playing minecraft.

Features

• Real life constellations and stars
• Moving planets with moons
• Realistic sun and moon positions, longer days or nights throughout the seasons
• Shooting Stars with annual Meteor Showers
• Nebulae, Galaxies, and the Milky Way
• Rare astronomical events, such as solar and lunar eclipses
• "Live mode" to show the current irl sky in-game.
• Makes the spyglass useful
• Full customizability, with custom planets or stars.

If you are only interested in simply replacing the stars and none of the mod's other features, check out Astrocraft Lite (Fabric and Neoforge).

Stars

Astrocraft replaces Minecraft's default stars with stars from real life. Stars retain their vanilla-style, but with variation in hues, some being more reddish, others blue. You can find any constellation in-game. Through the night, all these stars revolve around the north star (Polaris):

Some stars are variable, meaning they vary in brightness over time.

Galaxies, Nebulae, Clusters

The milky way is faintly visible at night, along with numerous other objects. These include massive galaxies like Andromeda and Triangulum, or smaller planetary nebulae like the Ring Nebula. The Milky Way and other deep-sky objects become brighter and more visible from high mountain peaks, but are easily outshone when the moon is out.

Shooting Stars / Meteor Showers

At night, you can occasionally see streaks of light shoot across the sky. Meteors often belong to a meteor shower, where multiple will appear to radiate from the same point in the sky. Some are sporadic, not associated with any shower. Meteors showers occur at predictable times each year. The Perseids for example, are visible around the middle of summer, around MC day 142. Occasionally, certain meteor showers can even produce "meteor storms". Below are a few example meteor showers:

Spyglass

The spyglass is an essential tool for exploring Astrocraft's skies, as it lets you observe an area of the sky in much greater detail. It increases the brightness of stars, and shows objects that would otherwise be too dim, like Uranus or Neptune.

What you can see using a spyglass depends on multiple factors, such as Y position or moon phase. It is better to climb a mountain and point upwards to observe very dim objects like nebulae.

Using the mouse scroll wheel, you can zoom in and out up to 500x.

If you have any issues, contact the mod author pymsrps, and post the full logs.