AstralSkies
Animated astronomical skies, Sun and Moon, eclipses, meteors and blood Moons. Custom Deep North auroras with colour palettes, independent cloud layers, constellation guides and saved F8 presets. EN/FR/RU/ZH.Astral Skies — Zephyrfit
Give your Valheim nights a sky to explore: catalogue stars, moving planets, a coherent Sun and Moon, eclipses, a layered Milky Way and flowing northern lights. Press F8 to make the sky your own.
Explore the sky
- Watch Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn among catalogue stars, with adjustable brightness, size, colour emphasis and gentle stellar scintillation.
- Identify 178 stars by aiming at an object for one second. Follow fourteen constellation and asterism guides, plus a separate Summer Triangle.
- Shape the Milky Way with colour palettes, dark lanes, width, radiance and optional decorative particles. Find the diffuse glows of Andromeda and the Pleiades.
- Enjoy cosmetic meteors and periodic meteor showers.
- Follow lunar phases and a coherent Sun/Moon cycle, with adjustable apparent sizes and optional solar and lunar eclipses.
- See copper blood Moons during nighttime raids, with personal controls for their appearance and optional native storm wind and waves for sailing.
Deep North auroras
Open F8 → Deep North to customise the northern lights locally in that biome. Native weather and time still determine when auroras appear.
- Vanilla is selected by default and follows the game's animated auroras.
- Boreal curtains and Polar arcs provide flowing forms and colour palettes inspired by real auroras. Adjust their width, height and band density.
- Set intensity, luminosity, hue and saturation. Lower luminosity softens dazzling highlights; higher values strengthen the glow.
- Choose a solid colour or a gradient of up to three RGB colours. Click a colour square to open its palette, select a swatch or refine hue, saturation and value, then confirm for colour 1, 2 or 3. Hexadecimal entry is also available. Cancel keeps the current colour. Gradients follow the aurora pattern and animation; the aurora's hue and saturation controls still apply to the chosen colours.
- Each aurora design remembers its own settings, including after restarting. Saving a sky favourite includes every design and the selected design. Restore Vanilla aurora returns to the native appearance while keeping the other designs' saved choices.
Your sky, your controls
F8 opens with Observation, followed by Sky, Details and Interface, with a dedicated Deep North button.
- Control high clouds and horizon clouds separately in F8 → Sky. Keep either layer visible while hiding the other. A separate toggle controls the sky tree; native rain, weather and ground fog remain active.
- Choose from three grouped sky presets: Realistic from Rage Clan, Immersive from BETATEST, or Panorama. Keep two independent personal favourites for your own skies. Panorama hides both cloud layers; use the individual cloud controls for another combination.
- Select one of seven quality levels, from 8 segments/10 Hz to 40 segments/90 Hz. Frequency is a maximum sky update target, not guaranteed game FPS. Moon definition reaches 2048 px; higher levels refine star halos.
- Pick Boreal Night, Nordic Bronze or Blood Moon as the interface theme. Drag the title to move F8 and scale it down to 50%. F8 or Escape closes it.
- English, French, Russian and Simplified Chinese follow Valheim's language. Local settings and favourites are saved in your profile.
Events and shared skies
Enable the console and use your normal native devcommands permission. Shared
commands also require the server's admin authorization. Use the same mod version
on the server and participating clients for shared events.
| Phenomenon | Local visual preview | Shared server event |
|---|---|---|
| Blood Moon at night | as_event blood 60 |
as_event_global blood 60 |
| Lunar eclipse at night | as_event lunar 60 |
as_event_global lunar 60 |
| Solar eclipse by day | as_event solar 60 |
as_event_global solar 60 |
| Stop forced mode | as_event off |
as_event_global off |
| Shared status | — | as_event_global status |
Duration defaults to 60 seconds and accepts 5–600. Shared events reach connected
clients and late joiners. Forced events expire automatically; a real raid blood
Moon takes priority. Local previews are visual only. Blood-Moon storm sea uses
native wind and waves and can be disabled with BloodMoonStormSea.
Shared events do not spawn raid creatures or change world time.
Installation
Install BepInExPack Valheim and AstralSkies with your preferred mod manager.
In Gale, use the Valheim catalogue or import a provided package as a local mod.
For manual installation, extract the package's BepInEx folder into an existing
BepInEx installation. Keep one active AstralSkies DLL per profile.
Preferences are stored in BepInEx/config/com.zephyrfit.astralskies.cfg.
Keep this file to retain your settings and favourites. Players sharing one local
profile share its settings; other players choose their own visual preferences.
A client-only installation supplies a personal sky. Install on a dedicated server
and participating clients for shared raid signals, admin events and storm sea;
see SERVER_INSTALL.md.
External language dictionaries can be placed beside the DLL in
Translations/AstralSkies. Embedded dictionaries provide fallback text.
Credits
Astronomy uses a simplified reference model and artistic brightness controls.
See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for catalogue, lunar-surface and chart credits.
Code is MIT licensed.
💬 Help, bug reports and suggestions
Discord: zephyrfit
User ID: 251341133085540352
I can help in English and French with installation, bug reports and suggestions. Contributions are welcome. For a bug report, include the game and mod versions, reproduction steps and BepInEx/LogOutput.log. Screenshots or a short video are useful for visual issues.