Constellations and the Night Sky

Yup, Venus is indeed upside down, and it rotates slower than its year to boot. And yup on Mercury too. What I meant was I don't know really why that phenomenon arises instead of tidal locking.

That's cool about NRAO. I never did much with radio myself, but I did have a few observing trips out to Kitt Peak, Mt. Lemmon, and Mt. Hopkins down around the Tucson area.

Oh, and what you're all waiting for:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/146519546/eas-logo.jpg

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Originally Posted by Myranda

... I think that may result in the same bad situation where one side ends up getting overcooked and the other side frozen. It wouldn't be perpetual day/night like the tidal locking situation, but you'd still be dumping solar energy more into one hemisphere than the other all the time, creating an imbalance.

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I totally agree that in this situation Hydælyn probably gets trapped in a sort of permanent 'season' where one hemisphere gets more sunlight than the other. What I find really interesting though is if the planet were trapped in an equinox where the planet's axis is perpendicular to the sun's so that both hemishperes get the same amount of sunlight. I like thinking about this stuff too much. XD

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Originally Posted by Myranda

This is where it starts hurting even my brain, but I think that may result in the same bad situation where one side ends up getting overcooked and the other side frozen.

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If it helps, think geocentrically and work backwards: Perpetual summer for the north. The southern hemisphere doesn't get zero sunlight, just less (excepting the antarctic circle, of course...that's perpetual night/twilight). We can assume some mechanism that distributes imbalances (warmth, etc) between hemispheres.

But ultimately we will have to "disconnect" logic at some point anyway, like how we saw the calendar go through nearly 40 years during v1.0 yet nobody aged and the Garlean attack on Ala Mhigo remained "15 years ago" in the minds of the NPCs.

Here's a fun one: consider the thrust vectors required to de-orbit something from a lunar orbit in a controlled geostationary descent to its planetary companion (i.e. Dalamud). :) :) Kind of similar to how in Star Trek they were always establishing geostationary orbits over arbitrary points on a globe. It's only impossible for unpowered orbits.

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Originally Posted by Kenmei

I totally agree that in this situation Hydælyn probably gets trapped in a sort of permanent 'season' where one hemisphere gets more sunlight than the other. What I find really interesting though is if the planet were trapped in an equinox where the planet's axis is perpendicular to the sun's so that both hemishperes get the same amount of sunlight. I like thinking about this stuff too much. XD

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Exactly what we've been talking about with a 0° tilt. :P

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

If it helps, think geocentrically and work backwards: Perpetual summer for the north. The southern hemisphere doesn't get zero sunlight, just less (excepting the antarctic circle, of course...that's perpetual night/twilight). We can assume some mechanism that distributes imbalances (warmth, etc) between hemispheres.

But ultimately we will have to "disconnect" logic at some point anyway, like how we saw the calendar go through nearly 40 years during v1.0 yet nobody aged and the Garlean attack on Ala Mhigo remained "15 years ago" in the minds of the NPCs.

Here's a fun one: consider the thrust vectors required to de-orbit something from a lunar orbit in a controlled geostationary descent to its planetary companion (i.e. Dalamud). :) :) Kind of similar to how in Star Trek they were always establishing geostationary orbits over arbitrary points on a globe. It's only impossible for unpowered orbits.

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That mechanism would be the atmosphere and oceans. But I have doubts they could move heat around efficiently enough to prevent the perpetual summer/winter from going out of control into extremes.

Gonna leave that 'time' thing alone since Ferne did give us an answer to that once and basically, yes, we have to logically disconnect the 'game clock time' from 'Eorzean historical time'.

Non-equatorial geostationary orbit? Nothin' a good bit of magic (or an impulse drive!) can't handle. :P

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p.s. If anyone else has the programs/skills to make their own logo version, I've also uploaded the Illustrator file I wrote it in:
EAS Logo - Words only, no background pic (eas-logo.ai)

For the axial tilt, you've mentioned temperate seasons and you've mentioned wet/dry seasons, but not what causes the wet/dry.

Monsoons. There is this thing called the Intertropical Convergence Zone - that point of the earth's circumference where at any given time the direction to the sun is exactly perpendicular to the earth. Because air is warmest at this point it rises more strongly and cooler air from elsewhere on the planet moves toward this zone as a consequence, bringing humidity (rain) along with it.

On a planet with an axial tilt, this happens at the equator exactly twice a year on the equinoxes, bringing the greatest amount of rain and giving rise to mostly tropical rainforest. By comparison, the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn get this only once a year during their respective summer solstice. The upshot of this is that the tropics exhibit deserts that rely upon the monsoon during high summer to bring much-needed rain and plants have adapted to cope with just an annual drink.

When I look at Thanalan, I see such a desert with the sort of vegetation that subsists off either the rare rain events or other sources of groundwater, which would place it on a tropic.
Mor Dhona, Vylbrand and the Black Shroud have characteristically temperate environments. Mor Dhona appears to be a temperate rainforest based on the amount of river water fed to it from both the north and east and prevailing weather patterns from the west.

This means the planet's equator is off the southern coast of Thanalan and Eorzea is, by its own frame of reference, in the northern hemisphere.

((PS: I admit this theory is incomplete and has the odd hole in it.))

I tried my hand at coming up with an EAS logo or some such (I'll make more banner like variations for signatures if people like it).

Here's one with legible English characters.
http://i.imgur.com/eqmeOn3.png

And another in Eorzean.
http://i.imgur.com/rGUIuk5.png

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Originally Posted by Catapult

Long wet/dry season explanation.

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Thanks for that, I was too lazy to go into all those details myself. :P Though I see Thanalan more as slightly higher latitude than the tropics (~30° rather than 23.5°). Akin to the Mojave/Sonoran deserts and general southwestern US/northwestern Mexico. The equator would still be quite a ways further south than even the most southern tip of Eorzea. But like I said I'll try and get a direct estimate of the in-game latitude at some point.

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Originally Posted by murf

I tried my hand at coming up with an EAS logo or some such (I'll make more banner like variations for signatures if people like it).

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Nice. I kinda mashed mine out quickly, but I do like the idea of having actual stars in there instead of just my slap it on crescent Hydælyn job. And Dalamud. I'll probably also work up some different banner designs for signatures as well. Variety is the spice of life~

But also, do you think it sounds better as "Eorzean Astronomical Society" or "The Astronomical Society of Eorzea"? Better decide that before we start media production in full :)

Oh no... just after hitting post reply I realized the potential acronym for the alternative name... "Don't TASE me bro!" and members could be called TASErs... what have I done...

I'd be inclined to say the "Astronomical Society of Eorzea" sounds better. But if 'TASE' is objectionable... 'Society' can be replaced by other words like 'union', 'association', etc.

So using the "Astronomical [x] of Eorzea" here are some options:

• Astronomical Society of Eorzea (ASE)
• Astronomical Union of Eorzea (AUE)
• Astronomical Association of Eorzea (AAE)
• Astronomical Alliance of Eorzea (AAE)
• Astronomical Partnership of Eorzea (APE)
• Astronomical Coalition of Eorzea (ACE)

Of course, any of these options also work by reverting to "Eorzean Astronomical/Astronomy [x]"

I'm partial to Astronomical Guild of Eorzea myself - fits in more with the game's lore after all. ;)

Astronomical Society is good too. :D

I think sticking with Society is best. Reflects a more casual/hobby aspect to it, whereas Union/Guild/Association/etc imply an air of professionalism as a primary career, or at least to me they do.

And unfortunately I can't post my hard evidence but... ~27°N