(With apologies to Phil Plait.)

Before I begin, let me say that I love Skyrim and all the Elder Scrolls games I’ve played. I think they’re great games. Indeed, it is because they are so great that any perceived problem stands out to me.

What’s #10 on my list? The sky in Skyrim. It’s broken. Read on…

I was taken aback by how gorgeous the sky was in Morrowind. I used to love looking at the two moons, massive against the stars, replete with fine details. Of course, back then the lesser moon orbited the larger moon. That changed with Oblivion. I don’t begrudge them that kind of minor ret-con.

But after noticing this astronomical change from Morrowind to Oblivion, I also started to notice other things about the moons. To be fair, I noticed more problems with Oblivion’s moons than Skyrim’s. But we’re not talking about Oblivion.

So, what’s wrong with Skyrim astronomy? Take a look:

Notice how the two moons are illuminated from different angles? This would suggest Tamriel’s sun is much, much closer than our sun is to Earth.

There are other discrepancies too. I’ve noticed that the moons can be full, or near-full, even though the sun is right next to them in the sky. This suggests that, for at least some of the time, the moons are further away than the sun!

It also seems odd that the moons always appear to the east and never directly overhead or to the west. That would suggest that the moons do not orbit around Tamriel’s planet.

Not everything in the sky is flawed, however.

Tamriel also has aurorae like the Earth. Skyrim is a fairly northern region, so it would make sense to see aurorae. (Though I don’t recall seeing such a phenomenon in Morrowind, even though Vvardenfell extends about the same way north.)

And lastly, Skyrim has a milky-way type object in the sky, suggesting that Tamriel’s system is on the edge of a spiral galaxy just like Earth.

You can see all this yourself. Dozens of night skies in a short timeframe are easy with the console commands. “Set timescale to” is what you’re looking for.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the Elder Scroll universe is a fantasy one, why would its astronomy need to be the same as ours? You may have played enough to know some of the lore about the moons, for example it being the remains of the god Lorkhan. Why should a god’s dead body behave in any way like a moon?

As I see it, there are only two options for resolving this.

One is that the astronomy in the Elder Scrolls works differently to the real world. Maybe the moons are mostly like our Earth’s moon, but just obey strange orbital mechanics. Or maybe the only common thread is their appearance — despite looking like planetoids they actually are bits of a dead god and therefore need not follow any laws of physics.

That option doesn’t sit well with me. Why mimic Earth’s night sky so well — complete with aurorae and the milky way — only to say it’s only similar by appearance. Like some sort of outrageous coincidence or sick deception. No — if you’re going to claim the night sky is all gods parts and holes leaking raw magic then it’d be more sensible if Tamriel’s sky was full of lava-lamp-like swirling energies, or massive gods and other entities going about their business, or something equally unique.

The other option is that Elder Scrolls astronomy is meant to work like the real world, and the discrepancies are just mistakes or time-saving omissions on the part of the developers. (I can’t be very critical of this. After all, how few gamers are going to notice astronomical problems, let alone think about them in detail? Better to concentrate on other things.)

I hope it’s this second option. Because I personally find the idea of massive orbiting moons more interesting than pieces of a god. If they’re planetoids, you can wonder what it might be like on the surface, whether any fantastic creatures live there, how it might be possible to reach the moon with spells rather than spacecraft. If they’re pieces of a god, they’re just so much decoration in the sky.