Constellations and the Night Sky

[Catapult]

Time to revive this thread with a new bit of info now that beta screenshots are allowed! Here is our conclusive proof that Eorzea is at approximately 30°N: I took a time series of screenshots and then stacked them together to make startrails and then measured the angle those made from vertical while facing east, which gives the latitude. I figured this would be more reliable than trying to measure the angle directly to a hypothetical pole star due to foreground obstruction of the idealized horizon and projection effects of a sphere onto a flat surface (i.e. my monitor).



Those pics are from Thanalan, but I had done the exact same analysis for Gridania with the same results, so as expected it hasn't actually been coded for each region to have its own separate latitude as far as the night sky is concerned. That being the case, I'm inclined to take the measurement as an average for all of Eorzea/Aldenard, so more northerly regions such as Dravania will be further north than 30° and Thanalan would be a bit closer to the equator than 30°.

Is it just me, or has the Moon moved the same amount as the stars? This would suggest that Hydaelyn's Moon is in a very interesting type of orbit.

[Myranda]

Is it just me, or has the Moon moved the same amount as the stars? This would suggest that Hydaelyn's Moon is in a very interesting type of orbit.

I haven't looked into the movement of the Moon in detail, but there are a couple things I can say here for now.

1. I would guess just based on ease of programming that the moon doesn't move continually it would move in large discrete steps, say at Eorzean midnight each day or with each change of phase. So it probably isn't moving at a different rate than the stars here, as you pointed out. And that's assuming the devs didn't get super lazy and that it moves at all (I would be so bothered if it doesn't)... This is part of where I really want to do more research with the moon.

2. Even if they did add an accurate model for lunar motion, that photo incorporates such a short time span that all celestial motion is still dominated by Hydaelyn's rotation. Stars, and everything else in the sky sufficiently far away from the planet including the Sun for that matter, appear to rotate 15° per hour (1 full rotation per day), and lunar motion would only be about 11° per whole day (only half a degree per hour) superimposed on top of the overall celestial motion (since after all Hydaelyn is rotating underneath the moon as well).

So I wouldn't conclude anything about the moon just yet, certainly not from my photo. Now Dalamud on the other hand... that had some messed up physics to stay geostationary through it's entire decent. But MAGIC!