Let's talk about Equus. How does the astronomy of this

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>>29461890
I was just thinking about this the other day myself

How long is a day, how long is a year?

>>29461958
It's scary because all of these things are totally arbitrary. Luna wants to be out partying super late? She can keep the moon up for a couple hours later. Celestia gets drunk? She might just forget to raise the sun, or do so badly (vid related)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLF2_iFf5e8

>>29461890
>It takes Alicorns (or 10 unicorns giving up their magic) to raise/lower the sun
Equucentric system (unless in reality Celestia and Luna rotate the planet, but that's doubtful)

>magic/manual effort to change the season
equatorial plane is aligned with celestial plane ergo no de-facto seasons ergo ponies need to force them to happen

The question of Equus astronomy -as well as physics and science in general- is a great topic that alas isn't discussed very often.

>>29462060
>stars don't rotate around NCP or SCP as moon moves
further evidence of a equucentric system and lack of rotation

>those movement patterns of sun and moon
wat

>>29462060
I imagine that if one sister goes out for partying or whatever, the other assumes their role as well temporarily. Now what would happen if both went out and got drunk?

>>29461890
>Equus
It's called Earth.

>>29462687
It's been implied that Equestria is an alternate universe and not an alternate timeline.

>>29462699
No this earth after the nuclear war that happen a thousand years ago killing or mutating human and it still have ruin of city in the forbidden land

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>>29462828
Learn english and come back, chink.

>>29462687
then it's a pretty fucked up earth because case and point, it's a geocentric "solar" system. i can't imagine what kind of catastrophe would switch the system to work like that. but anyways that brings into question physics anyways since presumably gravity doesn't work normally since objects in gravitational attraction rotate about their center of mass. in order for the sun to rotate about earth the mass ratios would need to be inverted, which is absurd. how then would fusion be possible on the star? (perhaps by magic)

>>29461890
bump for equphysics

Didn't spike say in one episode that twilight knows the names of all the planets and stars? This would mean there is more than one planet in the solar system

>>29461890
The moving-celestial-objects shtick is all a show. The world's a completely normal planet and the political powers claim to control the phenomenons like how the ancient shamans and priests claimed they could.

The world has an axial tilt (source: seasons), one sun and one moon (source: the show), and stars being grouped into star signs (because every culture does that).

>>29463711
source?

>>29464452
Explain the video in >>29462060 then

>>29464452
>stars being grouped into star signs (because every culture does that)
>every culture does that
[citation needed]

also this >>29464526
those would be some serious fucking eccentric orbits Equus is undergoing not to mention relative movement of sun and moon and non-planar displacement which by your physics rules of conservation of angular momentum should be impossible

>>29462964
No, it's referred to as Earth in the show. Not saying it's actually our Earth.

>>29464950
Could be seen as translation. The TV-O-Vision and the "yknow for kids" filters can explain many things that may not have logical consistency, albeit at the expense of potentially disregarding legitimate oddities in canonicity.

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>>29461890
It's a discworld, but not developed in the same way as the Pratchettian version: the gods are dead and magic runs wild.

The sun (an orb about 10 miles across,) is on a strange orbit that does not allow for a four-seasons year like we have but rather an eight-or-twelve season cycle.

This is why their holidays are usually out of sync with ours. They use magic and pegasi to normalize the weather to something comfortable for them and their food's growing season, ushering in an age of plenty and peace.

>>29461890
Unicorns wanted more growing seasons so they researched a way to manipulate the rotation of the Earth using the energy of the sun. But in altering the rotation, they ended up fucking things up to the point that they now have to do it manually because the rotation of the planet won't correct itself in time for them to survive. If they let it go things would return to their natural order, but they ain't got time for that

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>>29464950
It's actually inside our Earth.
>>29461890
The inner earth sun and moon are only about 500 miles across each. At the very center of our sphere is a dwarf singularity that controls their motion and that the sisters interact with .

>>29461890
I've never bought that the shifts of seasons actually REQUIRE effort. Outside of areas with Pegasi directly managing the weather, Earth-like normal weather patterns seem to prevail.

What's more likely is that they've stabilized the seasons so that they begin and end at reliable times without major unexpected storms. The benefits to this are numerous:
> Nobody loses their crops because everyone knows exactly when the growing season will end
> Stable weather throughout spring and summer extend growing season
> Lack of sudden shifts and accompanying storms also prevents property damage
> Fixed seasonal shifts also allow ponies to know exactly when to engage in winter- or summer-preparation activities - for instance, preparing fields for wintering under scheduled snow

Really the big issue is that if seasons were truly arbitrary, then there'd be monumental and constant storm systems at the borders between controlled and uncontrolled zones. They'd likely become difficult nearing on impossible to manage in short order, far worse than allowing the seasons to progress (albeit on a general schedule).

>>29465867
>It's actually inside our Earth
Alright, that settles it! I'm digging a hole to the centre of the earth! Where's my shovel?

>>29465867
Doesn't explain (presumable) star parallax or background stars to begin with, gravity would be all sorts of messed up, plus the curvature would force constant visibility of moon and sun.

>>29465941
save the effort lad, lets work towards actually getting to Equestria and not magma

>>29465930
Could be solved by having perfect alignment of the equatorial plane with the celestial plane, therefore seasons are innately a pony-created thing and thus have natural transitions

>>29465941
>Dig down far enough to break into Equestria
>Turns out the entire land is basically kept at 1 million atmospheres by pressures above
>It's why pegasi can fly with such teensy wings and stuff
>And then your shovel breaks through
>Equestria is sucked out of the hole by the pressure differential
>Gets shot up through to the Earth's surface in some kind of geyser of earth, compressed air, and liquified pone
>You are responsible for the genocide of all Equestria
>Game over

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>>29466002
I guess we'll never get there then. Fuck.

>>29465991
>Could be solved by having perfect alignment of the equatorial plane with the celestial plane, therefore seasons are innately a pony-created thing and thus have natural transitions
But we clearly see areas where the weather - including seasons - are operating entirely outside of pony control.

>>29461890
>10 unicorns giving up their magic to raise/lower the sun.

I can't remember, is this from the show or is it head canon?

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It's been talked about before, but Equus almost definitely exists within a set of concentric spheres. Different celestial bodies exist on different spheres, and at least the sun's and moon's spheres can be manipulated through magic.
This would explain almost everything, to my knowledge, that we know about how the sky functions in the show.

So:
The bodies can be manipulated easily because they aren't astronomical. They exist on planes relatively close to the surface of the planet.
The stars move independent of the moon and sun because they're on different planes. The stars that "aid" Nightmare Moon in her escape would work on the same principle.

While the physics of this are obviously going to be nonsense, I think this was the original intention of the producers (pic related) and offers more than any other theory in terms of how much of the canon it explains.

>>29462060
What if it's a flat earth and the un and moon are spotlights.

>>29466243
I think they're misremembering the first Hearth's Warming episode, which doesn't specify the number of unicorns it takes, and doesn't mention them needing to give up their magic.

>>29466167
ep numbers? I believe you but still want to see how it's handled in the show. afaik the everfree doesn't have seasons

>>29461890
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM-UnV9TEzY

>>29466382
Yup sounds pretty good. Would be nice to hammer out some of the details though.

>relatively close to surface of planet
>star capable of hydrogen fusion
>sustained life
something seems off. perhaps if it's an extremely small star, or the gravitational constant could be exceptionally high. more generally speaking, discovering the laws of physics in Equus would be extremely important, including the almost pataphysical existence of Pinkie's abilities.

also, nice fucken pic related. I didn't realize how close the similarities were until now

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>>29461890
ITT: The writers of a fantasy show for kids in the 5-8-year-old age bracket didn't take Galilean and Newtonian physics in account when developing their setting.

>>29466243
It's from the Journal of the Two Sisters.

>>29466382
Heavily disagree. Pulling a theory from a stylized depiction - itself based on a stylized depiction we know to be inaccurate - is shaky ground to begin with; furthermore, there are things like shooting stars which cannot be explained by the celestial sphere idea.

>>29466470
>not taking into account general and special relativity
>not taking into account quantum field theory
goddamn plebians get the fuck off my show staff

>>29466527
>Pulling a theory from a stylized depiction is shaky ground to begin with
Yeah, so? What matters is how much and how well it can the show's astronomy in comparison to other theories.

>itself based on a stylized depiction we know to be inaccurate
I don't see how this matters. Equus's physics, regardless of the astronomy, are already inaccurate compared to our own. More than that, the concentric sphere theory makes fewer assumptions than one that would have to explain everything within a realistic universe.

>there are things like shooting stars which cannot be explained by the celestial sphere idea.
Yeah, but that doesn't contradict the theory. There are possible explanations for it that wouldn't be inconsistent.

>>29466786
>Yeah, but that doesn't contradict the theory. There are possible explanations for it that wouldn't be inconsistent.

No, that's what I'm saying: The shooting stars we see are quite definitely not explainable by celestial spheres. They do not behave remotely as an object attached to such a sphere would, but do behave as an object in three-dimensional space intersecting the planet would.

>>29466819
Yeah, so one explanation can be that they don't come from the spheres and are caused by something on the ground.

>>29465991
>parallax or background stars to begin with
They're not stars. Those are lights from the cities on the other side of the inner sphere
>>29466002
Shot out of the Earth like toothpaste out of a tube? Sounds OK to me. Just bring a catcher's mit & wait for your waifu to come flying out.

>>29466945
I'm pretty sure it's show canon that Luna controls the moon and stars, ergo stars exist

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>>29466970
I would say that it is a more enlightened view to think of the moon and stars as separate and distinct entities..

>>29467040
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to moon and stars is in fact GNU+moon and stars, or as I've taken to calling it, GNU/moon and stars.

I meant she controls both in tandem, not necessarily as though they are one singular entity.

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>>29467048
Hi /g/

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>>29461890
Has anybody thought it may take place in a hollow earth or dyson sphere like scenario?

>>29467323
Any chance are you the dyson sphere guy in /edg/?

>>29467590
nope

>>29461890

>>29467040
Deities in old religions tend to control things we commonly think apart.

>>29461890
Considering that Twilight talks about the same constellations we see in the sky, is likely that their planet is in the same place in the universe as the Earth. It keeps revolving around the sun but it doesn't rotate and so it doesn't tilt its axes anymore, so ponies have to make the day/night cyrcle and the seasons artificially.
They have a similar kind of fauna to our planet. With some species which hibernate and/or reacts to seasonal changes. So the same kind of evolution that happened here happened there too, so it's likely that their planet stopped to rotate and tilt at one point in their history. Maybe because of magic: if magic can bend time, why not space?
Geographically it's overall different with some minor similarities to our planet.

This is my headcanon, but overall i think is quite logical.

boy wonder strikes again

>>29461890
unicorns and alicorns are good at grand scale illusion spells.

>>29466382
Agreed, plus in one of the comics (the one with Nightmare Rarity or whatever) a bunch of ponies went on the moon. Having a relatively close-by celestial sphere helps explain that.

>>29466440
It's magic!

Seriously though, it's pretty obvious celestial spheres are close to impossible using Earth-like physics. If Equus's Sun is on a sphere, it#s almost a given that it won't be a sphere of hydrogen and helium undergoing constant fusion.