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Can Tamriel have seasons?


Altbert

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I have been playing Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim since their releases, either on DVD or through Steam. I never wondered why we, in all three games, never saw the season changing from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter and winter to spring. I never used many mods for Morrowind and Oblivion, but then I saw "Seasons of Skyrim" on NexusMods, and I wondered if this would make sense.

Seasons according to lore
Spring: 1st of Sun's Dawn - 30st of Rain's Hand
Summer: 1st of Second Seed - 31st of Sun's Height
Fall: 1st of Last Seed - 31st of Frostfall
Winter: 1st of Sun's Dusk - 31st of Morning Star

Sunrise and sunset
Sunrise: 5:30 - 10:00am
Sunset: 4:00 - 8:30pm
Using the Creation Kit (Time of Day slider) you will experience the first signs of daylight at 7:00am and the last signs of daylight at 7:00pm. Therefore the daylength will be 12 hours, with 1.5 hours of dawn and dusk. You will always see the sun rise and set at exactly the same positions all year round! This is the same for Oblivion and nearly the same for Morrowind. Morrowind will experience 11.5 hours of daylength since one of the settings is half an hour shorter.

The protagonist's first appearances
Morrowind: 16th of Last Seed
Oblivion: 27th of Last Seed
Skyrim: 17th of Last Seed
The protagonist always appears in the first month of fall.

Consequences

  • Having 12 hours of daylength and the sun rising and setting at the same positions all year round,  would mean the planet Nirn doesn't have an axial tilt when orbiting it sun. The sun's path would always follow the same latitude circle.
  • Daylength and the absence of the axial tilt would suggest the sun's path slightly below Nirn's equator.
  • Having seasons, planet Nirn should have an axial tilt so that the sun's path would move from a southern tropic latitude to a northern tropic latitude during the year (for comparison: Earth's Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer).
  • Every region on Nirn would experience the same season all year round.

I know
Yes, I know it's a game, and for a game to be and stay interesting, it should have different landscapes and different climates, maybe even different seasons, at least 3D open world games. But, a planet needs an axial tilt when orbiting its sun to have seasons changing. 

What are your opinions on this?
 

Edited by Altbert
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Lore is Law, right - would Keplerian do? To explain the current setup in terms of cosmic events, let's consider the remote possibility of Nim once having a mass, wobble and eccentricity remarkably similar to that of Earth. At some epoch in Nim's long history there was at least one extinction event characterized by a large Jupiter sized interstitial planetary body entering the orbit of Nim's sun at great eccentricity, successfully removing practically all traces of said wobble. Certainly multiple interactions were required to smooth out to circularize the orbit.

How good are the clocks on Nim anyway. it's likely the 5:30-10:00 and 16:00-20:30 figures are an approximation - might be 5:25 in "summer "and 5:35 in "winter", still far too short a time interval to suggest a different season.

Another explanation of the cuff is that Nim's sun identifies as a pulsing class M LPV variant with a period corresponding miraculously to the period of Nim's own orbit. A circumstance, as with many of those found on Nim, to be pulled out from some mighty book of magic! :P

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In Skyrim, the Sun is exactly at its zenith at noon, every day of the year. Two conclusions inevitably follow from this simple observational fact: the planet's axial tilt is zero, and Skyrim is on the equator. We can repeat this observation in Cyrodiil, which is much further south, and get the same result: the Sun is exactly at its zenith at noon, every day of the year.

It is astonishing – the height of the Sun's culmination does not depend on the geographical latitude of the area! If we exclude fantastic explanations, such as the curvature of space, extreme atmospheric refraction and other magic, there can be only one explanation – the planet Nirn has a cylindrical shape!

However, this statement can be easily verified - we need to observe the shape of the planet's shadow during eclipses! But here's the problem, there are no eclipses in the Nirn system! Never! The Sun, the planet, two huge moons and there are no solar or lunar eclipses, eclipses of satellites of each other, there are no conjunctions either! I don't know how to explain this fact, maybe it's a wonderful orbital resonance? Although no! It's simple - the orbits of the moons are located in parallel planes! Wow! This is definitely not Keplerian, and it is unlikely that there can be physics in which this is possible.

There are no tides on Nirn. It's strange, are its huge moons made of cheese?

Nirn plus its two huge moons - that's the famous three-body problem, isn't it? Such a system can't exist for any length of time. The smaller moon would have been ejected from the system long ago, the moons would have collided, one of the moons would have fallen onto the planet... Many billions of years ago there would have been a bright and loud cataclysm that would have destroyed this world.

Simulation? Simulation... Simulation!!! This is the only explanation for the existing astronomical absurdities. Nirn is the Matrix, and a rather sloppily made one at that.

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@Imsteam

LPV could be an explanation with a period of 91.25 days, but that would need the sun to vary in size and color, and 4 different period variations to explain the 4 seasons. 

Question: With M LPV do you mean Mira Long Period Variable star? 

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@Drengin

I haven't even thought about the absence of tides on Nirn with Masser and secunda orbiting Nirn or the three body issue. Too occupied with the seasons.

I disagree about Skyrim (or Cyrodiil and Morrowind) being situated at the equator. Those provinces should then have a tropical or at least subtropical climate.

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Best fit might be a type M SRA where the intensity amplitude is minimal, producing a reddish tint to everything. There's a general tendency for the smaller mass stars to have longer periods, so bound to be a trawl for a perfect match.

For nearby stars the Stellar Catalog is nice and easy, otherwise try Stellarium or go all techo with searching Gaia or Simbad.

For fictitious stars, sure to be one modded (or at least moddable) for games like Starfield or NMS. :)

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The above appears (though I could be wrong) to be assuming a heliocentric universe, but the universe in question is, I believe, geocentric (with Nirn as the 'geo' part) and the sun is a bloody great hole in the fabric of the night sky (which is ?Oblivion?), which lets the light of Aetherius flow in (the stars are also smaller holes). To the best of my knowledge, this is actual canon fact, not merely in-universe belief. So that would probably affect things. There are definitely canonically seasons, they're mentioned in various places (2920, Last Seed refers to a "late summer squall", and so on) not to mention the people, locations and vessels with seasons in their names (Brunwulf Free-Winter, the Fall Forest/Winterhold/Summerset Isles/can't think of any with Spring in the seasonal sense, the Winter War), not to mention the names of the months are pretty clearly pointing to a seasonal structure very similar to our own. 

 

Someone should ask the Dreamer what they're thinking...

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Hi Gnewna,

I am indeed assuming a heliocentric universe, also assuming Nirn and its sun are more or less similar to Earth and its sun. The sun's mass would make it impossible for the sun to orbit Nirn, but people in Tamriel may believe it's a geocentric universe, as thousands of years ago astronomers on Earth did. 

As for spring: Danica Pure-Spring, Raven Spring, Cloud Spring, Cormeir Spring, Mara's Spring Chicken.

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