Constellations and the Night Sky

[Catapult]

Well, it appears to me at least that Eorzea is in Hydaelyn's northern hemisphere - at the end of at least two of the ARR trailers where it pans out to show Hydaelyn from space it seems to show Aldenard and Vlybrand in the northern hemisphere of the planet. But it's not very clear after all (if I can find a screencap of the trailer in question I'll post it here).

EDIT:



It's not the best (I had to increase the brightness to show the planet's detail), but I managed to pull a screenshot from this trailer, and you can see Aldenard and Vlybrand quite clearly - although the sun is obscured behind Hydaelyn the light bloom on the top right corner of the planet hints at it's axial tilt, thus showing that Eorzea is pretty conclusively located in the northern hemisphere.

Unless the camera is oriented "upside down". I dare you to reconsider your perspective.


I'm Australian. It's a thing.

[Myranda]

Unless the camera is oriented "upside down". I dare you to reconsider your perspective.
-IMG snip-

I'm Australian. It's a thing.

...our Australian friends may want to have a word with us...

I done warned ya!!!!

Though how often do you Australians actually use that map orientation, and how often are maps just "standardized" to the northern bias? (To be fair, ~70% of the world's land area and ~90% of the global human population is in the north, so if one version has to be chosen as standard, sorry but you're outnumbered...)

Anyways, with additional evidence as stated in previous posts, this particular line of questioning has been laid to rest. We're in the north.

[ArkhamNative]

Unless the camera is oriented "upside down". I dare you to reconsider your perspective.

I'm Australian. It's a thing.

That map is so awesome. I like the way it tugs on preconceptions I wasn't even aware I had. ("I already feel the blood rushing to my head," and "Obviously the world's not like that, or we'd fall off. You know, because gravity pulls down, and if we're not on top of the 'ball', we would fall off into space.")

But back to topic, because Eorzeans have called "North" the same half of their globe that Eorzea is in, it's in the Northern hemisphere. And they also chose to represent "North" as "up" on maps.

I guess we'll see in Phase 3 (lolpun) if or how SE has altered the oddity of the moon being seemingly random phases in v1's sky each night. And I'm looking forward to info about constellations or whatever astronomical/astrological lore they have in store.

[eagleone]

Just came in here to say, although I have little to add to the meat of this thread, I love reading this.

As a keen follower of the skys in RL, FF11 and FF14, I love that this is being debated and I hope that we get some great lore from the devs in responce!

I am also glad that I am not the only one who spotted the moon setting/rising in the wrong place on each phase! Makes me feel less geeky somehow lol!

Keep up the good work in this thread guys, next time I will try and contribute something with substance!

[Anonymoose]

I dare you to reconsider your perspective. I'm Australian. It's a thing.

It may be argued that, because the Earth is a giant magnet, that "positive" and "negative" poles are arbitrary labels, and thus so are the "North" and "South" poles. Why, so much land is in the Northern Hemisphere. It's no wonder that those who developed these standards would fall to the bias of their own area being in the north, right?

But what about the compass?

Even in the hemisphere labeled "southern," the compass points to the "north" pole. This is the direction that magnetism flows. Our Eorzean minimaps have compasses, and if they're to be believed, then our maps consider the direction magnetism flows to be "north," as well. To say otherwise would be to say that Eorzeans interpret their compasses differently, and then make all their maps upside down because, hey, why not?...

...

...

...

NORTHERN HEMISPHERE REPRESENT!

/sprint
/doorslam

[Enkidoh]

Well, before you all pass judgement, I'm actually Australian too. Go easy on me! Because we're upside down all the blood drains from my head and makes me do silly things!

Seriously though, the reason why I regarded Eorzea in the northern hemisphere of Hydaelyn when looking at this image as shown:

Is because the orientation of the landforms (Aldenard and Vlybrand) which can both be made out easily enough, is the same as the well-known Eorzean 'world' map released with 1.0:



As has been stated before, the fact that FFXIV's lore takes some of it's cues from real world Roman and Greek history (and mythology too for that matter) only adds more credence to the idea that Eorzea is in the northern hemisphere.

[Catapult]

Fun fact: The north end of a magnet points to the magnetic south pole, which is in the geographic north. You would not believe how many school text books mess this up. If you're really curious about this phenomenon, google "geomagnetic reversal".

But I digress, and my original comment was rather tongue-in-cheek. But there was an underlying point...

As Albert Einstein said, everything is relative. So if we assume that:
- Hydaelyn's axis is tilted; and
- Has a landscape insignificantly affected by aetherial elemental effects; and
- Rotates sinistrally with respect to the geographic north; then
Eorzea is "north" of the equator relative to its own maps since the colder parts of the continent (Coerthas) lie in the direction labled "north".

Emphasis on how Eorzeans have defined the direction of north.

[Myranda]

Now, now guys, don't get too wrapped up in the philosophy of language here. North and south are just arbitrary words denoting one pole or the other and Eorzea uses the exact same reckoning as the real life Earth (which as pointed out by Catapult is counterclockwise when viewed from above the north pole). Call them kita and minami if you like it's just a name, but virtually all civilizations have some term for them because it's the natural coordinate system for a rotating sphere. Point is we all understand what "north" implies and that while there are other ways to view the Earth, they're not the ones being used. Compasses on Eorzean maps and in-game clearly label north as up, south as down, etc etc.

More fun facts: Did you know many older maps actually used east (latin: oriens) as up?? This is where the root of the word orientation comes from. And why Asia gets referred to as the Orient.

There are also a few remote cultures on Earth that don't use north/south/east/west at all and everything is referenced to your own person (it's over that way in the direction of my right shoulder). It sounds bizarre to us, but it works for them and they have an amazing sense of direction.

The more you know~

Of course now I'm gonna throw fuel on the fire after saying that because science and logic are topics so near and dear to my heart, lol. And I like to challenge arbitrary viewpoints to put new perspectives on things.

Going back to Enkidoh and the map vs. image of the globe, you make a point that it does match the orientation of north being up, but on its own still wouldn't conclusively prove it's the northern hemisphere. Take this picture of Africa from space for example. Africa is still oriented north-up, but is near the top of the image and we don't even see Europe. If you didn't know any better, you might think Africa is in the northern hemisphere but we know a large portion of it is southern (and even if the Sun were visible off the side, it wouldn't be enough of a change to help pin anything down, especially with an unknown axial tilt and time of year). It's all a matter of vantage point/perspective. Being able to see rotation in action is the only way we could pin down an equator and poles with no prior knowledge of the geography from only an image like this.

Magnetic north and south? Ugh, semantics... Personally I feel the north and south terminology should be left to only describing geographic location, and the poles of bar magnetics should only be referred to as positive/negative or ingressive/egressive to reflect whether the field lines are going in or out of the material (which to be frank is just as arbitrary a convention in the mathematics, but its the one we use, and at least we'd be rid of the north/south confusion).

When it comes to the parallels between Eorzea and Greece... I'd give that circumstantial evidence at best. There's no technical reason the geography has to mirror the political story. More likely having a northern setting comes from something I ninja edited in a previous post, that 70% of Earth's land area is northern as well as 90% of the world population, and not from Greece's latitude.

The colder regions of Eorzea being north I'll admit is a decent line of reasoning but still not conclusive on it's own since altitude above sea level also plays a role in climate, and Coerthas is known to be quite mountainous. That and we don't know anything really about the regions even further north, they could be more temperate.

Axial tilt: has nothing to do with north/south. At all. They're defined relative to the axis so there's no way it can matter. The only thing this would influence is seasonal variations in climate and the length of daylight because we're now introduced a new element of the orbital plane around the sun. I also mentioned before in small text, all in-game evidence would imply no tilt since sunrise/set are always at 6:00am/pm and a region's climate appears to be steady year-round. Truth be told though this is almost surely just a programming convenience because to implement this realistically would be too much of a hassle, they'd have to define a latitude for each individual zone and then compute an offset angle for the sky texture based on the date, not worth it. It also gives convenience to players for mobs that appear only at night, for example, you can always expect to find them every day of the year.

Of course, this is all moot. If in fact the sun truly does travel in an arc across the southern skies as shown by the in-game compass, this is the only piece of evidence we need to establish a northern hemisphere location, as I repeatedly pointed out. None of the other stuff is needed at all, it's that conclusive.

Oh gods, I'm becoming that guy aren't I??? ; ;
/stillpatientlyawaitingconstellationlore

[murf]

Would it possible for Hydælyn to have its axial precession occur at such a pace that somehow at least Eorzea remains in relatively seasonally locked location?

[murf]

By the way... I love a simple question involving constellations turned into a rampant discussion of lunar phase physics and finding the longitudinal position of Eorzea.

Go go Eorzea Astronomical Society!