ETHEREAL COSMOS - Special Edition

ETHEREAL COSMOS is a retexturing of the Skyrim galaxy, stars, and constellations. It brings beauty and a touch of fantasy, while remaining subtle enough to not be lore unfriendly. I wanted to bring a sense of depth and grandeur to the Skyrim night. I hope that I've achieved that aim. In the spirit of simplicity for users, I decided to combine my ETHEREAL AURORAS mod with this mod, rather than staring another mod page. They both retexture the night sky, so they naturally belong together. Download version 2. 0 to get the added aurora textures. ETHEREAL AURORAS revises the default Skyrim aurora textures, doubling the dimensions and increasing the detail and variation. Since the original textures were small, there should be little performance impact of these new textures. Therefore, this mod should be usable on anyone's setup.

You have several versions of this mod to choose from. There is the "regular" version, that has more subdued colors for the galaxy texture, and a "vivid" version for people who want a more colorful galaxy texture. There are also two versions with "twinkle stars."  The twinkle effect speed is controlled via the timescale setting. One version has a denser star field with the vivid galaxy, while the "subdued" version has less stars with less prominent constellations and galaxy. All four options include the aurora textures with version 2. 0.

The default galaxy is replaced with a nebula belt comprised of many hi-res Hubble images. The stars are redone to create a sense of depth and variation in brightness and detail. No longer are they just a bunch of little dots. Stars now have more variation in shape and color. The constellations have been redefined to stand out better from the star field with more detail and color that varies from the center to the trailing edges of each major star.

Like all my recent mods, this retexture was done with performance in mind. The "galaxy" texture is the largest, being a 4K texture, but since it wraps the entire night sky, it wasn't practical to make it smaller without affecting the appearance. The stars and constellations are both 1K textures, so they are performance friendly. And realistically, stars are a long way away, so they shouldn't be overly sharp. If they are, they look fake and painted on. Distant stars should be a little dim and fuzzy. The sharpness and detail of stars varies depending on their distance, and they do in these textures.

While I've included screenshots in the gallery to show the new textures, it is hard to capture the overall effect in a static image. You need to see them in-game to fully appreciate the changes. My screenshots were taken with Climates of Tamriel, and you can see how the colors and saturation varies depending on the type of night sky that's active. Obviously, any ENB (or