Does the FFXIV Solar System Have Planets?

I absolutely love what the artists have done with our night sky. It is beautiful!

In particular, the decision to have all the stars of particular constellation the same color, just adds that much more to the sky. You can easily make out the main constellations of Ezorea, as opposed to real life, where you need to learn star charts in order to navigate the heavens.

Now, anyone familiar with astrology & astronomy knows more than the constellations are involved in the night sky. We also have the Moon and the planets.

So, when I look out at the FFXIV night sky, nothing leaps out at me as a planet. Was this just an oversight by the art dept. or is our world, its Moon, and our Sun the only occupants of our solar system?

PS I omitted the word "Other." The title should ask if we have other planets in our solar system. Sorry. lol

There was a thread on the old 1.0 forum that discussed Hydaelyn's night sky (and many of the posters are actually professional astronomers and scientists) but I can't remember if there was any mention about other planets in Hydaelyn's solar system (personally I presume there would be, especially as residents of Hydaelyn use the word 'star' to also mean 'planet', including their own world), so your guess is as good as mine.

Either way, this is the thread I was talking about *alerts the Eorzean Astronomical Society by linkshell*

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

residents of Hydaelyn use the word 'star' to also mean 'planet', including their own world

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I find this such an annoying quirk, especially since stars and planets are two very different things. I'm pretty sure it stems from the fact that Japanese uses the same word for both terms. Doesn't make it any less annoying.

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Originally Posted by Mysterysword

I find this such an annoying quirk, especially since stars and planets are two very different things. I'm pretty sure it stems from the fact that Japanese uses the same word for both terms. Doesn't make it any less annoying.

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It's nothing to do with Japanese... I don't think. "Star" is an archaic term for planet as well (the term being used frequently in astrology, Venus being referred to as the "Morning star" and "Evening star," etc). Given this game goes to considerable lengths to sound like a proper period piece (in the EN localization, at least) that such archaic language would be bandied about is hardly surprising. (I earnestly did not know that "anon" was even a word before I played this game, much less what it meant, and I like to think I have a pretty good vocabulary.)

It does have something to do with Japanese, depending on the original dialogue. Hoshi (星), which means star, is often used to refer to planets as well in media like anime and video games for whatever reason. Dunno about more formal works. Example off the top of my head is in Advent Children when Sephy first shows up and monologues about his plan. He uses "kono hoshi" meaning "this star" (though it's referring to a planet).

Now that I think about it, it could just be an archaic way of referring to a planet. I dunno. Not exactly fluent in Japanese anymore.

The English dub of Advent Children had no problems with throwing in "planet". The problem with using "star" for both actual stars and planets is that it's just confusing. And fine, be as archaic as you want, but when people can no longer figure out what you're exactly referring to, by looking the word up in a dictionary, you've crossed the line.

When referring to a planet as a star, you're using the definition of "star" as "a small luminous dot in the night sky, whether alone or as part of a constellation", not as "a ball of burning gas". It's therefore not technically correct for Eorzeans to refer to Hydaelyn as a star.

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Originally Posted by Mysterysword

The English dub of Advent Children had no problems with throwing in "planet". The problem with using "star" for both actual stars and planets is that it's just confusing. And fine, be as archaic as you want, but when people can no longer figure out what you're exactly referring to, by looking the word up in a dictionary, you've crossed the line.

When referring to a planet as a star, you're using the definition of "star" as "a small luminous dot in the night sky, whether alone or as part of a constellation", not as "a ball of burning gas". It's therefore not technically correct for Eorzeans to refer to Hydaelyn as a star.

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Take it up with XIV's localisation team if you've got such a problem with it.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

Take it up with XIV's localisation team if you've got such a problem with it.

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I would, but sadly, I'm not part of the Balmung/Gilgamesh 1%, so all my feedback forms go straight into the shredder.

Anyway, to answer the OP's question: Maybe, maybe not. It would stand to reason that there are planets chilling out (relatively) near Hydaelyn, but if Hydaelyn's any indication, planets are all sentient gods. Or maybe all sentient gods are planets, but not all planets are gods, sentient, or otherwise. If there are other planets, they're not the focus of the story, so they're not mentioned.

That aside, if there were other planets, Eorzeans should know. Early astronomers, on Earth, could tell the difference between planets and stars because stars tended to stay in one spot in the night sky, while planets moved across it.

We don't know what the cosmology of FFXIV is like, but bear in mind that as a magical fantasy world, it doesn't have to follow a any of the rules that our real universe observes.

It is entirely possible that conflating the terms "planet" and "star" is reasonable - for instance, because Hydaelyn actually has no star for a sun, and what we see as the sun is just a tiny, hot ball that closely orbits the planet, much like its moon does and probably about as large. When we see another star in the sky, it, too, could be another isolated planet with a tiny, hot ball spinning around it - or, perhaps, the stars in the sky are completely different types of astral bodies. Or maybe stars are not bodies at all, but pinpricks in the giant shell that contains the universe and shields it from the infinite brightness outside of it. Though, certainly, there must be at least one other star-that-is-a-planet out there, because Midgardsormr specifically came from such an astral body. It may not be visible in the night sky, however.

The cosmology of FFXIV is limited only by the imaginations of the writers behind it. We really can't make any assumptions!

Tangentially related by virtue of where the thread has been steered so far...

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Though [Hydaelyn] is the name of the entire planet, the term is very rarely used by its inhabitants, for to understand the concept of a planet, one must first know of other worlds, and most on Hydaelyn do not.

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Back when humanity was as ignorant of the cosmos as most on Hydaelyn are, lights in the sky were mysterious fixed objects ... aside from the seven that weren't. It cemented the number seven in history as a divine and useful number and became enmeshed with the gods themselves.

See the seven day week: Sun Day, Moon Day, Tyr's Day (Mars), Woden's Day (Mercury), Thor's Day (Jupiter), Frea's Day (Venus), Saturn's day.

The Seven Luminaries were known as the asteres planetai. "Planet" is literally short for "wandering star".

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

We don't know what the cosmology of FFXIV is like, but bear in mind that as a magical fantasy world, it doesn't have to follow a any of the rules that our real universe observes.
*snipped for brevity*

The cosmology of FFXIV is limited only by the imaginations of the writers behind it. We really can't make any assumptions!

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You know, I never thought of that. It would be pretty cool if the FFXIV "universe" was envisioned to be like the pre-Copernican model. Imagine the Astronomical Society peering through their telescopes to see celestial beings chipping away at the outermost shell to reveal a new star while a nearby comet heralds the birth of ruler! Me likey!

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

See the seven day week: Sun Day, Moon Day, Tyr's Day (Mars), Woden's Day (Mercury), Thor's Day (Jupiter), Frea's Day (Venus), Saturn's day.

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5 major planets (or atleast visible clearly). If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

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Originally Posted by uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu

5 major planets (or atleast visible clearly). If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

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Given how neatly everything usually fits, it's probably both, but we only know of the elements and polarities to be definitively true.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Back when humanity was as ignorant of the cosmos as most on Hydaelyn are, lights in the sky were mysterious fixed objects ... aside from the seven that weren't.

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Just a minor clarification: It wasn't so much that stars were "fixed" as they were travelling on a "fixed" route across the night sky, from east to west. The five inner planets became known as the "wanderers" because, unlike the stars, their paths across the sky weren't fixed, but were varied instead.

Moreover, I suspect that, for the longest time, humanity did in fact believe that the "wanderers" were just special stars (hence the propensity to name them after gods and goddesses). Venus, for example, was known as the "Evening (or Morning, as the case may be) Star".

I'm not entirely sure when humanity first realised that the planets weren't special tiny lights in the firmament, but were actually other spherical objects like the Moon. I would guess it was most likely after the invention of telescopes and, even more likely, only after Galileo broke the Copernican model, by establishing that the Earth orbited the Sun, and not the other way round.

Lest we get trapped in a eurocentric, Anglo-Saxon worldview, bear in mind that, even today, there are cultures that explicitly name the planets as "stars". Mars, for example, is known in Chinese as 火星 (huo3 xing1), or literally, the "Fire Star". In fact, the Chinese named the planets after elements, hence: Mercury 水星 (sui3 xing1) "Water Star"; Venus 金星 (jin1 xing1) "(Gold) Metal Star"; Jupiter 木星 (mu4xing1) "Wood Star"; and Saturn 土星 (tu3 xing1) "Earth Star".

And guess what? Given the fact that the Japanese language borrowed heavily from Chinese, the people of Japan know the planets by the same names as the Chinese. ;)

Hence: Mercury is すいせい (sui-sei, or water star); Venus is きんせい (kin-sei, metal star); Mars is かせい (ka-sei, or fire star); Jupiter is もくせい (moku-sei, earth star); and Saturn is どせい (dou-sei, or earth star).

In short, the recognition of planets as spherical objects in orbit around a burning star is fairly recent phenomenon in human history. So, it doesn't break immersion by any measure for a faux mediaeval society like Eorzea's to refer to planets as "stars".

To be sure, Eorzeans may not even understand planets the same way we do, as we have no real idea of how the firmaments actually work, what with Zodiark being the moon, and the Hydaelyn being a giant crystal (both of which is not even likely to be common knowledge among smallfolk, who, as far as I can tell, still associate the moon with Menphina, and remember Dalamud as Menphina's Hound).

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Originally Posted by uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu

If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

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6 elements + 2 polarities. When aether is acting within the Elemental energy spectrum, there are three dimensions that determine its behavior: aspect (what "direction" from neutral the imbalance is; i.e. ice, water, a mix) , elemental charge (how strong of a concentration that energy is), and polar charge (a tilt towards an active or passive manifestation of that element). Most of the time you only hear about the energy from the elemental aspect, but a deep polar charge manifests unique properties, as well, and thus they get the same consideration. I consider astral and umbral the "up and down" relative to the "12 / 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 o'clock" positions of the elements and how "far from center" that line goes. Aetherology is weird.

The night sky has something far more obvious than wandering stars, however - it has six constellations of (what are believed to be) stars that line up perfectly with the elements. These are tied into Eorzean myth as the six elemental heavens into which the Twelve retreated (causing the six elemental hells to come into being). A seventh "polar" heaven and hell star is said to exist in the skies, as well, but these are less well-defined ... perhaps because Final Fantasy XIV folklore states that it was only supposed to be the six until it was brought to the developers' attention that shouting "SIX HELLS!" sounds dumb, but "SEVEN HELLS!" is just right.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cu1BcOaVIAAbSTH.jpg

Still 6+2 with constellations seems to be the origin of the 8 day week. The best suggestions I know of for believing that other planets exist are: the "Dragon Star" which might be where Midgardsormr came from, the fact Allag built interstellar starships at all in the first place, and Midgardsormr's comments on Omega's origin, which are ambiguous as to whether Omega came from another planet in our dimension, our planet in another dimension, or another planet in another dimension, lol. Please look forward to 4.4...?

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Just a minor clarification: It wasn't so much that stars were "fixed" as they were travelling on a "fixed" route across the night sky, from east to west.

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"Fixed" to the great crystal sphere was the implied reference. Apologies :p

Whoa! So much great information here and some nice thinking outside the box too. I love it!

When the Seven Hells are just right.

Tell me about it. Amazing work here.

Also for some reason the memory stones from the convocation have 13 real world zodiac constellations plus the sun