Constellations and the Night Sky

[Enkidoh]

That link isn't working sadly. ; ;

But you make a good point about the moon's name - returning to my earlier point about the real moon, how many people actually know that in astronomy, Earth's moon is officially called 'Luna'? Not many I'd imagine. Because in nearly all cases it's just simply referred to as 'the moon'. It's easier to say as it's a shared term that can translate easily into all languages, rather than having to deal with converting what is an ancient Latin name into languages where the context might be lost.

So I do believe you might have hit the nail on the head about Menphina - I can definitely imagine most Eozeans just calling it the 'primary moon' or even just 'THE moon' (after all, before Nael pulled it out of whack Dalamud was so tiny in the night sky it seemed more like just another star than a moon).

[Myranda]

But you make a good point about the moon's name - returning to my earlier point about the real moon, how many people actually know that in astronomy, Earth's moon is officially called 'Luna'?

Strictly and scientifically speaking (as determined by the International Astronomical Union which is in charge of regulating the naming of celestial bodies), its English name is "the Moon" (note the capitalization and inclusion of "the" in the quotes), and the same goes for "the Sun". Luna (and Sol) are the Latin names for them, but the official modern names are just the Moon and the Sun. The Latin versions are almost exclusively used in fiction to invoke a sense of "scienciness" or advanced civilization, or in poetry just to be... poetic... but nobody uses them in the scientific community and literature, just like no scientist seriously references Earth as Gaia or Terra. Other languages may use something closer to the Latin (like Spanish la luna), but in those languages it doesn't sound foreign or special, it's just the way they happen to say "the Moon" in the same way our Spaniard might call a dog a perro. When it comes to Menphina I do however concur that very few citizens would refer to it by name, and just simply say "the moon" as suggested.
(Fun fact: professional astronomers don't call our galaxy the Milky Way in journals either, it's just "the Galaxy")

As far as our attempts to determining the latitude of Eorzea on Hydælyn, drawing conclusions based on that screencap do of course depend on our European cultural notion of north as being "up": our Australian friends may want to have a word with us... Of course, with the developers being Japanese, it's again not a far stretch to assume this is the convention being used, especially given the orientation of the in-game compass, no matter how much calling south "up" would be just as valid a viewpoint.

(For the record, I don't think we can actually glean with any confidence anything about the axial tilt of Hydælyn's rotation relative to its orbit based on current evidence, including the light bloom. The planet isn't shown to rotate in the trailer so it could just be camera perspective. Hell, we could attribute the apparent lack of in-game seasonal weather effects as evidence of a 0° tilt, though we run into problems with frozen-time paradoxes as once explained by Ferne in relation to main story events needing to be pegged down to a given year, regardless of when a particular player completes the content.)

This ended up way longer and more nuanced than I originally intended... but that's what I studied in grad school, so... @.@

[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.

[Zenaku]

If you look at FFXIV night sky there stars in the color of each element just like ffxi. So i'm guessing there is constellation maybe one of the new race come from other world for all we know

[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!

[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]

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!

[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?