Starlit – Better Sky, Stars, Auroras, Galaxies, Shooting Stars, Planets.

Starlit

Turns Minecraft’s sky into something worth looking up at. At night you get thousands of colored, twinkling stars, a glowing Milky Way, nebulae, distant galaxies, wandering planets, shooting stars, meteor showers, comets and northern lights. By day you get a deeper blue sky, fiery sunsets, halos around the sun and rainbows after the rain.

Works with shaders. Starlit’s sky shows up with Iris and Oculus shader packs, either in place of the pack’s sky or on top of it.

Starlit is a client-side mod for Fabric, NeoForge and Forge, from Minecraft 1.18.2 to 26.3. Nothing needs to be installed on the server, and it works in singleplayer and on any server. Every effect can be switched off or turned down on its own.

Stars

• Thousands of stars – from 500 up to 12,000, in place of Minecraft’s 1,500 grey dots.
• Real star colors – hot blue-white stars, yellow suns and cool orange-red giants.
• Twinkling – stars shimmer gently. A slider sets how much.
• Star sparkle – the brightest stars get soft four-pointed sparkles.
• Stars at dusk – the brightest stars come out early in the evening and fade late at dawn.
• Hidden constellations – a Creeper, a Sword, a Pickaxe, a Heart and a Ghast are hidden among the stars. Can you find them? Turn on Constellation Lines if you need a hint.
• Spyglass stargazing – look through a spyglass to bring out fainter stars, galaxies and nebulae.

Deep sky

• The Milky Way – a glowing band of distant stars across the sky, crossed by dark dust lanes.
• Nebulae – faint colored gas clouds scattered across the sky.
• Galaxies – distant spiral and elliptical galaxies, best on dark nights.
• Planets – three bright planets that wander slowly along the sun’s path from night to night.
• Moon glow – a soft halo around the moon, brightest at full moon.
• Comets – every so often a comet visits for several nights, growing brighter and then fading away.

Shooting stars

• Shooting stars – streak across the sky every night. A slider sets how often.
• Meteor showers – some nights bring a shower, with dozens of meteors racing out from one point of the sky. It peaks in the small hours.
• Fireballs – now and then a meteor is a big, slow, colorful fireball.
• Make a wish – catch a shooting star in the middle of your view and you make a wish.
• Sky announcements – at dusk you are told when a meteor shower, a comet or a strong aurora is on the way.

Aurora

• Northern lights – curtains of light that ripple and drift across the sky. By default they show in snowy biomes, and on rare stormy nights everywhere. You can also turn them off or show them always.
• Four color sets – Classic, Vivid, Crimson and Ice.

Day sky

• Atmosphere – a deeper blue overhead, a soft haze at the horizon and a warm glow around the sun.
• Rich sunsets – fiery horizons, sunbeams, a pink afterglow and Earth’s shadow rising on the other side of the sky.
• Halos and sun dogs – rings of light around the sun with bright spots beside it. Common in cold biomes and rare elsewhere, and a halo around the moon on some nights.
• Rainbows – a rainbow appears opposite the sun for a while after the rain stops.
• Birds – flocks of birds fly across the daytime sky now and then.

The End

• End sky – the sky of the End fills with slowly swirling violet nebulae and strange stars.

Shaders

Starlit works with Iris and Oculus shader packs. The With Shaders setting picks what happens while a shader pack is on:

• Replace (default) – Starlit’s sky takes the place of the shader pack’s sky, while the pack still does its lighting, shadows and water.
• Overlay – the shader pack keeps its own sky, and Starlit draws its stars and effects on top.
• Off – Starlit steps aside and leaves the sky to the shader pack.

Some shader packs draw clouds that don’t hide what is behind them, so a few stars can show through those clouds.

Supported versions

Install

Fabric: put Fabric API and the Fabric Starlit jar for your version in your mods folder. Add Mod Menu to get the settings screen (Mods > Starlit > Configure).

NeoForge and Forge: put the Starlit jar for your loader and version in your mods folder. No other mods are needed. The settings screen is in Mods > Starlit > Config.

Shaders: install Iris (Fabric, NeoForge) or Oculus (Forge) as usual. Starlit needs nothing extra.

Controls

Set them in Options > Controls > Key Binds, or with the Key Binds… button in Starlit’s settings.

Settings

Settings are saved in config/starlit.json.

License

MIT