Plothole? *endwalker spoilers*

[DinahDemiurge]

So, shouldn't the Watcher's house and the Zodiark prison be observable from the planet? I assume they have telescopes and stuff right?

[Atamis]

The American landing site of the Apollo missions is still on the moon. see if you can see it. Theres too much atmosphere in the way to get high resolution views that small.

[DinahDemiurge]

The American landing site of the Apollo missions is still on the moon. see if you can see it. Theres too much atmosphere in the way to get high resolution views that small.

To be fair, the zodiark prison and watcher's house are much bigger than the moon landing site and the contrast of colors etc. should make it easier to see, no?

[Atamis]

It should but something is definitely off with the moon in general. You can clearly see a sun in the sky on planet, but in the moon there isn't a single sun. Something is casting that bright light and one could only assume SE was literal when they called the planet a Star. Which would mean the reflection from the moon would be intense and i doubt you could see it over the Zodiark pit. . Its also not directly facing the planet, at most you could see over the crater rim is the wispy orange trails.

[DinahDemiurge]

It should but something is definitely off with the moon in general. You can clearly see a sun in the sky on planet, but in the moon there isn't a single sun. Something is casting that bright light and one could only assume SE was literal when they called the planet a Star. Which would mean the reflection from the moon would be intense and i doubt you could see it over the Zodiark pit. . Its also not directly facing the planet, at most you could see over the crater rim is the wispy orange trails.

Now that's interesting.

[Gerel]

Could be that part of the initial ward set by Hydaelyn included a powerful glamour to obfuscate the Watcher's Palace and Zodiark's prison from Etheirys' surface.

[Puremallace]

My guess is it is from the same thing giving you the ability to not immediately die upon getting there. Best guess is an illusionary bubble around the area.

[Enkidoh]

Darksteel-foil-hat time but... what if it's because Sharalyan has been deliberately obscufacting things all this time to hide what is on the moon from meddling eyes - having agents stationed in say Ishgard's Observatorium ensuring their telescopes are only trained on the Dragonstar and not the moon.

My guess is it is from the same thing giving you the ability to not immediately die upon getting there. Best guess is an illusionary bubble around the area.

That's explained during the main scenario quests in Bestway Burrow - the giant rainbow crystals the lorupitts are using to produce things like food and power also produce oxygen and artificial gravity for the moon, so although it's not readily apparent, the moon actually has a proper atmosphere and Earth/Hydaelyn

/Etheriys

-level gravity (and there I was always expecting the reason for being able to breathe normally while on the moon would have been handwaved away as just the kojin's 'breathe underwater' blessing manifesting in a new form again. )

It should but something is definitely off with the moon in general. You can clearly see a sun in the sky on planet, but in the moon there isn't a single sun. Something is casting that bright light and one could only assume SE was literal when they called the planet a Star. Which would mean the reflection from the moon would be intense and i doubt you could see it over the Zodiark pit. . Its also not directly facing the planet, at most you could see over the crater rim is the wispy orange trails.

To be really fair I would just chalk that up to simply deficiencies in the game's skybox not being designed to replicate outer space properly so it just renders it like it's on Hydaelyn/

Etheriys

(I'm sorry, I'm still going to keep calling the planet 'Hydaelyn' and not it's 'new-old' name except when in context of the pre-sundered world as I'm stubborn like that ), leading to the contradictions like the moon's surface being lit up like a Starlight tree and yet the planet is in shadow, and yes, the sun is not visible anywhere on the moon.

As for the planet being called a 'star' being literal, that's not the case, the planet does go into shadow as it turns very slowly, suggesting it's either a) facing from the sun and thus eclipsing it from the perspective of the moon, or the planet is in the moon's shadow (it's 'umbra'), which seems much more likely for explaining why the sun cannot be seen from the moon. Either way, this looks like something the Eorzean Astronomical Society should look into....

[Iscah]

(I'm sorry, I'm still going to keep calling the planet 'Hydaelyn' and not it's 'new-old' name except when in context of the pre-sundered world as I'm stubborn like that )

call it whatever you like, but those HB spoiler tags aren't designed for obscuring a single word in a sentence. That just makes a big feature of the fact that there's some kind of spoiler about the planet's name. Better to simply avoid mentioning it and use the non-spoilery term outright.

[Zohar_Lahar]

The sun was visible in early footage of Mare Lamentum, but in the final release its not seen (though it is clearly daylight).