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Message: <blockquote data-quote="afstanton" data-source="post: 5821281" data-attributes="member: 10492">Another possibility is to have a much more rapid precession of the equinoxes than we do on Earth.  The poles trace a circle every 26k years or so.  Summer in the northern hemisphere actually occurs when the Earth is at the farther end of the ellipse that is our orbit, but our orbit is not very eccentric at all.  About 13k years ago, summer was when we were at closest approach, and Polaris was not the north star.If your world had a much more serious wobble to its axis, it could even move the axis through a full circle twice a year perhaps.  The north star would change rapidly, being a true north star for only a few days before moving on to "that part of that constellation right there...no, a little to the left".  Anyway, if you have it swapping which hemisphere is pointed more at the sun at one time of the year than another, that will enable more seasons.  (Note: With swapping that often, you wind up with multiple equinoxes over the course of the year, obviously, and "precession" doesn't make much sense, it's more axial variation.)An excessively eccentric orbit could easily carry a planet out of the habitable zone for its star, by the way...as long as we're talking about realism...</blockquote>