Features:
- Real constellations and stars turning around Polaris
- Milky Way, nebulae, galaxies and star clusters
- All major planets plus more than 100 asteroids
- Spyglass zoom up to 500x showing Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings
- Shooting stars and annual meteor showers with predictable peaks
- Solar and lunar eclipses plus transits across the sun
- Tilted sky with seasonal day and night lengths
- Observing Location option for viewing from other planets
- Live Mode that mirrors the current real sky
- Configurable magnitude limit, year length and custom planets
- Fabric and Quilt support
- For Minecraft 1.21.1
Astrocraft swaps the random vanilla starfield for the real night sky. Actual constellations and named stars appear with subtle differences in hue, some varying in brightness over time, and the whole sky rotates around Polaris through the night. The Milky Way stretches overhead alongside galaxies such as Andromeda and Triangulum, nebulae and clusters like the Pleiades, all of which show up best from high mountain peaks on nights when the moon is out of the way.
The spyglass finally has a real job in Minecraft. Looking through it brightens the stars and reveals objects the naked eye cannot catch, and scrolling zooms in up to 500 times, far enough to pick out the four bright moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus and dim worlds such as Uranus and Neptune. Every major planet plus over a hundred asteroids drifts along the zodiac on real orbital parameters, while shooting stars streak past on their own and annual meteor showers peak on days you can plan for.
The sun and moon follow a tilted path set by the latitude you choose, so days stretch out in summer and shrink in winter, and picking a polar latitude gives endless day or night. Moonlight brightens the ground around full moon, lunar eclipses turn the disc red, and a solar eclipse dims the world to nighttime while Mercury and Venus can be caught crossing the sun as small black dots.
Star density, year length, overlays for constellations and the ecliptic, custom planets and even the world you are observing from are all configurable, and Live Mode shows the sky as it looks right now in real life. Because positions are calculated from world time, everyone on the same world sees the same stars. The build here is for Fabric and Quilt on Minecraft 1.21.1.
