The sun rises in the... west?! · 10:45pm Mar 9th, 2015
From the official map of Equestria it's shown that Canterlot is up and to the right of Ponyville. You can roughly estimate the spiral tower to be in the upper middle left of Ponyville from a sequence in the Cutie Pox, and the windmill in the upper right from the opening, and the shape of the river. Using those as guides, you can estimate that the sun clock gimmick in Lesson Zero is facing Ponyville from around those pink trees by the gazebo, facing up and to the left. Another depiction of that spiral tower/windmill pink-tinted Ponyville in Winter Wrapup shows Canterlot far beyond and to the right of the windmill, which fits their relative locations on the map of Equestria.
But during Lesson Zero, the sun travels clockwise, from left to right across the sky. If the view is facing up and to the left (the northwest) then that means the west is on the left and the east is on the right. That means the sun rises in the west, and sets in the east. Sure it's the southwest, and the northeast, but that's still west to east. Furthermore, Canterlot is embedded in the west side of the mountain, and the Princess Celestia has been shown rising (or accompanying the rise) of the sun with it directly behind her. If the sun rose in the east, then if it rose directly behind Princess Celestia the mountain would be in the way.
Of course, the map legend has the arrow pointing to the right. We're just assuming north is "up" on the map because we didn't notice how ponies do things differently. So in fact, Canterlot is embedded in the south side of the mountain, the sun rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest, Equestria is in the northern hemisphere, and we're just interpreting the map sideways.
This implies that the frozen top part of the map is west, not north, so therefore it can't be a polar region, yet it's still cold there... and the San Palamino desert similarly can't be closer to the equator, since the map is sideways from what we expect, and north to south is right to left. So whatever made the desert a desert can't be more sunlight, as the frozen top of the map gets the same amount of sunlight as the cooked bottom.
This is highly relevant to my story.
...
My mind has been exploded TWICE
The sun rises in the east on Earth because of the direction of the Earth's spin. Most of the other planets in our solar system have similar spins. (But Venus and Uranus spin the other way, so the sun rises in the west.)
The relationship between Equestria and its sun is entirely different. The planet appears not to spin, or if it does spin the spin is irrelevant to the day/night cycle. Instead the sun is raised by magic. It rises wherever Celestia fucking well wants it to rise.
Celestia controls the damn thing, it can travel the sky any way she wishes it to :-p. The rest of your research - mind a bit blown :-).
My mind has been blown, then restored, then blown again :(
My own theory: The sun USED TO rise in the East, but they couldn't put the castle on the East side of the mountain for structural reasons, so Celestia decided to raise the sun from the West from that day forward.
You fail to mention Cutie Mark Chronicles, when Applejack watches the sun rise while looking inland from Manehatten.
guy, you're amazing. i love thinking about this kind of crap, i just never have a lot of time to do it.
2863252
Can it do that? Can it explode twice?
2864630 It can
It can do it
there are a few ways to explain this, from other real planets in our own solar system where spin is the wrong way round, to Maps just having South(pole) be North(up)
yes. lets question the physical logic of magic..ayyy
Excellent catch on this
I never even thought to question the direction the sun moves.
Didn't they say "frozen north" in Crystal Empire? I'm not positive they did, but if so, that confirms map directions are correct.
So here's my theory: The sun originally did rise in the east, but yo princess so old, the planet's magnetic field has reversed since then. So now it's west, and the "frozen north" is actually their equivalent of antarctica. Either that or tectonic plates have moved since then too, and who knows what was where back when sunrise was east.
Or Celestia was just assisting Twilight in going crazy in Lesson Zero.
Or she puts the sun wherever the heck she wants every day.
Of course sometimes it looks like they put the moon down in the same place they pull the sun from. They could be going in opposite directions and it wouldn't matter from equestria's point of view.
I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Equestria is flat. Ancient Egyptian cosmology seems the closest match.