Seasons In SotA

Ok, Thanks for the explanations!

 

--In the vastness of the MetaVerse are many worlds. Some there are who have so many avatars that they have lost track of which world is actually RL. These poor (or perhaps blessed?) souls live in dreamworlds where different laws of physics apply; where physical beings vary in myriad ways; where imagination becomes reality, as if by magic...or perhaps just...by magic.
--Few get to create, as did Lord British, a representation of their imagination so convincing that it seems, or perhaps better to say, it IS real. Representations of imaginations began with the story telling of Bards around primitive campfires. Then progressed into songs that spread far and wide, eventually leading to books, and now to computer programs which day by day become more realistic. One day Lord British will advance beyond using old TRS80's as servers, and we shall see AI as we cannot imagine today.

 

Ok, I did some research, and I think the information below is correct from the perspective of Earth's heliocentric system.

My statement that the sun always shines from the north in the southern hemisphere was incorrect.

In a heliocentric system, the range of angles at which the sun's arc passes through the sky is determined by the planet's axial tilt and the latitude of the observer.

Seasons in a heliocentric system are also caused by axial tilt.

Consider the perspective of a person living somewhere along the Earth's Equator:

From the equatorial perspective, the sun shines from the northern sky for half the year, and from the southern sky for half the year.

On the March equinox, the sun shines directly overhead at the Equator.
The angle of the sun's arc then proceeds towards the north until reaching its most northern angle at the June solstice.
The angle of the sun's arc then reverses direction and proceeds back towards the Equator,
crossing over the Equator again on the September equinox, and heading southward.
The sun's arc reaches is most southern angle at the December solstice.
It then reverses direction again and heads back towards the Equator to repeat the cycle.

The sun's declination reaches a maximum equal to the angle of Earth's axial tilt 23°26' (23.44°) on the June solstice, then decreases until reaching its minimum -23°26' (−23.44°) on the December solstice, when its value is the negative of the axial tilt.

The tropics are the region of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are delimited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at 23°26′11.7″ (or 23.43659°) N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at 23°26′11.7″ (or 23.43659°) S; these latitudes correspond to the axial tilt of the Earth.

The tropics include all the areas on Earth where the Sun contacts a point directly overhead at least once during the solar year.
Thus the latitude of the tropics is roughly equal to the angle of the Earth's axial tilt.

From the perspective of anywhere inside the tropical zone, the sun shines from the north part of the year, and from the south part of the year.

The closer the angle of a planet's axial tilt is to 90°, the wider the region of tropics. If a planet had an axial tilt of 90°, the tropical region would cover the whole planet.

However, in the middle latitudes of Earth outside the tropics, the sun always shines from the south in the northern hemisphere and from the north in the southern hemisphere.

Thus, if the sun always shines from the north at a certain location on Earth, that location must always be in the southern hemisphere.

And on any planet in a heliocentric system, if the sun always shines from the same direction, it means that the oberver's location is outside the tropical zone and in the hemisphere opposite the direction of the sunshine.

Even at locations in the tropics on Earth where the sun sometimes shines from the north and sometimes from the south, it should be possible to determine whether you are in the northern or southern hemisphere by determining which direction the sun shines from for a greater percentage of the year.

I'm not sure how much of the above information is applicable to a geocentric system.

Next step would be to figure out how sun angles and seasons would work from the perspective of a theoretical geocentric system as exemplified by the moondials in SotA.

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References:

Earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
- Section: Axial tilt and seasons

Equator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator

Axial tilt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt

Season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season

Equinox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

March equinox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_equinox

September equinox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_equinox

Solstice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice

June solstice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_solstice

December solstice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_solstice

Sun path
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path

Position of the Sun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun

Declination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declination

Ecliptic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic

Tropics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropics

Middle latitudes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_latitudes

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We know NB is fixed, and the sun (and everything) revolves around it on the same plane. Since the sun, moon, and planets do not travel directly over head, we know that Novia, Hidden Vale, and Mistrendur are at least to one side of the plane the heavenly bodies travels on. Sure, north and south are arbitrary as far as "we just called them that." Regardless, someone on New Brittania decided that directions are a thing, and based on the direction they labelled "north" Novia is in the south.

If we want to say "muh shardfalls" and that north is south and left is right and cats and dogs are living together, then, sure it's all magic, and the planets don't revolve, they just travel on the backs of turtles and disappear into the void when they fall below the horizon. However, we know that LB is pretty into astronomy, and they put a lot of work into designing a system that, while not the same as our solar system (or likely any solar system, but who knows) obeys some fundamental laws and works as you would expect it to given those laws.

 

I'm not disputing that, but saying that the sun rising in the east or being in a specific part of the sky is not bound by some law of cardinal direction. The tilt of the planet, the nature of its rotation around to the star it orbits, if this planet is not in fact orbited by star instead - these factors will determine what is in the sky and where and we do not have enough evidence to support really any hypothesis about the nature of the planet we are on, especially when there is magic involved.

 

What color is the sky in your world?

 

When Titius and Bode's Law, and Kepler's Law which is derived from Newton's Laws cannot fit or properly describe the positions, motions or rotations of "our New Britannia's" celestial bodies or moons, "then it must be by magic" ... and therefore chasing a dream where mathematics and it's laws attempt to reach past magic, yet failing when they reach their breaking point in principled reason.

This is to say, I think we are over thinking when expecting any deep astronomy to "fully" explain our sky. I believe the septagram/heptagram was/is it's prime motive for being, rather than motivated through astrological laws, "which don't hold up past that septagram/heptagram prime motive for being".

When reaching for seasonal effects I think we need to look past "the cause of seasons" and concentrate on our desired motive for more deeply examining our seasons. In this way, we are looking past the Cabalist Sieges and their celestial cycles, and possibly linking further seasonal effects in our motives.

This is just such an example from real life world metaphysical history, presented here as an amusement to spur further thought into what exactly are we after when demanding so much from our sky:

The Kolisko Effect, or Morphochromato:

Lilly Kolisko was a nurse in her day job, but was also a very accomplished and noted Astrologer Alchemist in her time. Following the suggestion of her recently departed close friend Rudolph Lorenz Steiner who was a well noted Australian philosopher and esotericist , Kolisko took parchments of paper and filtered a solution of water and lead through them during a conjunction of the Sun and Saturn. The results seemed to show that while lead was in a watery state during this conjunction, that the lead in the water would pass through the parchment paper with little trouble leaving the parchment rather clean. In other control group parchments were also tested in filtering of the lead from the water, these displayed that the lead would not pass the parchment without this conjunction. In RL Astrology, this is not true, though some Astrologers insist that they have replicated the same test findings. "The power of the Sun is said to have caused the lead to be ignored by the paper".

Ref Planets Saturn= lead, Mars=Iron...ext... is the axum in most of Astrology's books. (but not found true by science) yet? umm.. some are just crazy I think ... or should I say magical?

Newton went insane in investigating such things !
~Time Lord~

 

Many actions taken by players in games are not considered canon. While it's true that Lord British can technically be killed by the player, it is not a certainty that he will be, nor is it a scripted event or in any way written into the story of any Ultima. Therefore, not canon.

 

@Wilfred , I'd like to note that what is stated there may or may not be true to outcome:

Cases in Point:

@AzazelReborn had the largest "reported" Trophy Pumpkin thus far,
Measuring 3.74 and harvested on "Jan 11 602 PC" in Britt Mart. (also another without report of it noteworthy particulars (date? time? ext. , measuring 3.73)

I have grown 2 such large Trophies,
3.73 harvested on Nov 27, 601 PC in Wizard's Rest (grown in open air)
and
3.69 harvested on Dec 25 601 PC in The Time Tunnel (grown in open air in an underground POT)

Combined and compared, these demonstrate no seasonal bias.

That's something to think about and possibly gather more data from, as these larger trophies come in very small sample size, yet are outstandingly remarkable in their size, which is the point or paramount motive. "In this example, Winter actually beat Autumn in size".

Yet this draws a deeper question, what was going on in the sky during the times/dates/places when they were harvested, and, since such things would be non-seasonal, could they then be occurring in the places they did, in some formula akin to those which bring each town/city under Cabalist Attack.

In other words, "are we looking at astronomy, where astrology may provide a more predictable answer".

( @Elgarion , this is what I'd like to see our celestial bodies predicting, as it would then complement our astronomy/astrology ways. I don't think they should coincide with each other, I think they should fall under the same style in predictability, rather than the seasons, because our planet truly has no real seasons. Crafting can't be adjusted or modified to such a system as our astrology (due to crafter objections), yet our Agriculture is still very open to inviting such change of when things are more likely to happen, as our agriculture is all about timing anyway. I'd like to see deeper efforts into the timing we farmers need to pay attention to to bring about "great things" (loot in whatever form, great pumpkin ext.) from our gardening).

Maybe our special bonus things can be a matter of planetary things, while our seasons on the calendar are for quantity of normal agriculture product.

Whatever the case, we need to make our Orrery/s and attention paid to them matter for more reasons within our game.

@Bowen Bloodgood , (or anyone)... do we have a list somewhere that shows all the ways our astronomy is meaningful or matters? I've was gone quite a while, so maybe there's actually some reason to use an astrolabe?
~Time Lord~

 

Great, informative post @Wilfred !
Did you actually watch the seasons change in game or did this info come from elsewhere ?

 

Thank you!
I watched some Twitch stream videos to confirm the season change dates.

Twitch Videos - Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues
https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues/videos/all?sort=time

 

I'm already into "winter wheat", but I have no idea why except that is makes my winter Christmas decor look a bit better It's certainly no time to be barefoot in Wizard's Rest ~TL~