My favorite OS X screen saver… and well, my favorite screen saver for the past two decades, is back for Mountain Lion.

Mind Console Productions has quietly updated the port of After Dark’s Starry Night to version 2.0… and restores full Mountain Lion compatibility. If you ran the previous version on Mountain Lion, you’d get a (very) glitchy notification from Apple that it is not compatible with this OS.

I strongly suggest updating Starry Night as soon as possible if you haven’t yet updated to Mountain Lion, the buggy alert from Apple is enough to give someone an elliptic seizure.

The good news is, Starry Night 2 runs great on Mountain Lion, and is relatively unchanged (which, is the way it should be).

Believe it or not but Starry Night for OS X is based on a port of After Dark’s Windows code. The Windows port of After Dark came only after Berkeley System’s became an overnight success with After Dark for Mac.

The most direct way to get Starry Night 2 is from the MacUpdate listing for the screen saver. I suspect there is no dedicated web site due to the fear of potential for licensing issues, despite Starry Night not being sold (let alone, distributed) in enough time to exercise the Abandonware Exemption to the DMCA.

Oh, and because of said exemption, here’s a mirror. : )