A calming space screensaver with turning galaxies

Deep space, from the night pack in Screensavers by Zaweba, is a calm one. Spiral, barred and elliptical galaxies turn slowly and drift across a starry sky, and now and then a wormhole opens with a lensing swirl. You can set the number of galaxies, the speed, and whether wormholes appear at all.

The night pack was made for screens in dim rooms. Each of its screensavers is mostly dark, with a few bright moving things, so it's easy on the eye. Deep space is perhaps the most peaceful of them.

Galaxies that turn

The three galaxy types make a sky that feels varied without being busy. Spirals have the sweeping arms everyone recognises. Barred spirals have a straight bar of stars through the middle. Elliptical galaxies are smooth, soft glows. They all turn slowly as they drift, so the scene changes gradually over minutes rather than seconds.

The number of galaxies setting decides how crowded the sky is. A few galaxies leave lots of dark sky between them, which is restful. More fills the view.

Because everything is generated by the screensaver's own code, no two evenings look the same. The galaxies are placed and turned afresh each time, so even after weeks you won't be able to predict the sky.

Wormholes, or not

Wormholes are an occasional event. A swirl opens and bends the light around it, then fades. They add a moment of surprise, which some people love and others find a distraction. If you want the screen completely calm, switch wormholes now and then off, and you're left with only galaxies and stars.

Speed controls how fast everything moves. For a calming screensaver, low is best.

Putting the galaxies on your screen

Open Screensavers by Zaweba and choose Deep space from the list. Change the settings while the live preview plays beside them, then press Preview full screen to see the sky at full size. When you're happy, press Use this screensaver. It's built into your own Windows profile, so no administrator rights are needed, and Windows' Screen Saver Settings opens for you to pick it and set the wait time.

If you change the number of galaxies later, the next run uses the new setting. Each screensaver reads its settings when it starts.

For a bedroom or a dark office

Because it's mostly black, Deep space suits a screen near a bed or a monitor in a room you use in the evening. If you have more than one monitor, choose whether it runs on each monitor, spans them all or stays on the main monitor with the rest black. On a laptop, set a frame cap of 30 or 60 frames a second in Install and options; the battery saver there blanks the screen when the charge falls below the level you choose.

Other space scenes

If you'd like a little more going on, Space traffic in the same pack fills the sky with rockets, satellites and the odd UFO, and Starfield warp in the classic pack flies you through the stars. Tick Deep space along with them and use Install several for one screensaver that picks among them at random each time the PC goes idle. It's a nice way to keep space on the screen without seeing the same thing every time.

Everything is drawn by Zaweba's own code. There are no photographs of real galaxies, so every sky is made fresh as it runs.