1
Flat Earth Debate / How Far Can You See?
« on: July 10, 2014, 07:37:17 AM »
This guy claims to have seen snow capped mountains 466 miles away.
"What's the record for visibility without help from the silhouetting effect? I think that might belong to the report of the expedition led by Korzenewsky (1923), who reported seeing snow-capped peaks of a mountain range 750 km away. Conditions were perfect: the lower atmosphere was in shadow at sunset; the peaks were quite high (4650 meters, or over 15,000 feet); they were covered with white snow, increasing their visibility; and there must also have been considerable looming to bring these distant features above the observers' horizon. As the observation was made on June 1, near the peak of superior-mirage season, the looming is not improbable, though the amount required is hard to believe. The observers themselves were in the deserts of Turkestan [now southeastern Kazakhstan] at a height of nearly a kilometer, where the dryness of the air favored extreme clarity, and looking across a broad, sandy depression. And, of course, much of the air path was in thinner air well above ground level, because of the mountains' height." http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/horizon.html
How is that possible on a curved earth?
"What's the record for visibility without help from the silhouetting effect? I think that might belong to the report of the expedition led by Korzenewsky (1923), who reported seeing snow-capped peaks of a mountain range 750 km away. Conditions were perfect: the lower atmosphere was in shadow at sunset; the peaks were quite high (4650 meters, or over 15,000 feet); they were covered with white snow, increasing their visibility; and there must also have been considerable looming to bring these distant features above the observers' horizon. As the observation was made on June 1, near the peak of superior-mirage season, the looming is not improbable, though the amount required is hard to believe. The observers themselves were in the deserts of Turkestan [now southeastern Kazakhstan] at a height of nearly a kilometer, where the dryness of the air favored extreme clarity, and looking across a broad, sandy depression. And, of course, much of the air path was in thinner air well above ground level, because of the mountains' height." http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/horizon.html
How is that possible on a curved earth?