what would this look like through a telescope

here is the entire series of shots of this cargo ship at this particular location/elevation (location p140 on the maps), which also includes a crop of the same image debated previously (over whether a phantom wave is obscuring the ship or not).  these 9 photos span 40 seconds.  it is obvious that there is no "wave" in front of the ship.

before we start: zeroply, if i want your opinion i'll give it to you.  any post you make will just give the rest of us worse mouse wheel cramps.  so, seriously: piss off.  go moan about random shit somewhere else.  let your more serious, sober, and vastly more capable fe "friends" handle this.

to keep things in perspective, remember that we'll be looking at 1:1 pixel crops from originals like (and including) this uncropped but severely downsampled original, at 9.7x zoom:



i should also point out that the surf was very low that day.  (you can look up historical surf reports by location, on several internet sites.)  you can see how calm the seas were in some of the wider shots on the same day/time, on the flikr site.

the remaining images are, as stated before, relatively tiny 500px crops at 1:1 unresampled pixel density, from the 10.1mp originals.  the resulting magnification is 700x of natural (not digital) zoom.  these nine images were taken over a time span of 40 seconds.  most of these were rotated a few degrees to get the entire horizon level for better picture-to-picture comparison (after all we're watching for that phantom obscuring wave), then cropped.  the last shot doesn't quite have all of the ship in the shot but was included anyway because perhaps the "phantom wave" might show up in that one.  or not.  to see the exact date/time, click on the image to see the date/time-based filename in flickr.  from there you can also view exif data, which also has the exif timestamp.



















in total, i have approx 30 shots of this particular cargo ship, over a time span of about 30 minutes.  they were taken at documented lat/long locations, elevations, and focal lengths.  (and of course full exif metadata.)  to help control for the variability of time when comparing elevations, i took photographs at progressively descending elevations; then reversed and took the same shots again at progressively ascending elevations.  i could post series after series showing the same thing: there is no wave in front of the ship.  and i will, if someone would just donate a ftp server.  but as it is, it's pointless, and it is time-consuming to produce the 500px-wide 1:1 pixel zoom crops...more time than is remotely justifiable.  an ftp server would kill many birds with one stone: no need for crops, i could upload the entire collection, and everyone would have full access to the full-size originals.

ENOUGH WITH THE RANTING!  THIS IS REALLY PISSING ME OFF.  I'VE WARNED YOU NUMEROUS TIMES.  THERE WON'T BE ANOTHER.

/my rant

OK ok ok ok... whoa now hold the phone... Everybody just take it easy, I don't want to see people getting banned over heated opinions.

I tell you what: I will get a website and ftp server setup later today, and publish the information for you guys to use.

cpt: PM me your email address and I'll give you a usernmae and password for ftp access. I'll setup a user directory only you can access.

everyone else: Whatever space I can get leftover... I will be happy to create another directory to contain any and all photos the server will hold.

End result: we should have a place for all of the cpt's pics, displayed for everyone to see. Along with that, I will make a very simple website to provide navigation to whatever photos / groups of photos that others post as well.

Uploads: If there is a problem with images or heck, even videos, being too large (say over 1GB) of an attachment for email, then we can work out a username and password so you can have access to the ftp site restricted by directory. Don't want any acusations or accidents regarding deleted items. This way it will be on my shoulders to do my best to keep it straight.

I have to go do a job a couple of hours away right now... will take me most if not all of the day, so bear with me... I'll hopefully have it up by later tonight.

Take it easy everybody and let's not lose any accounts on FES over this eh?

- Optimus

Impressive.

ENOUGH WITH THE RANTING!  THIS IS REALLY PISSING ME OFF.  I'VE WARNED YOU NUMEROUS TIMES.  THERE WON'T BE ANOTHER.

/my rant

Calm down, Engy, it's not really that much of a rant.  Why don't you go band some noobs who are ranting and going "LOL FLAT EARTH RETARTS".

As for cpt:  Good job with those pics.  I doubt the wave would last for 40 seconds, or they would pop up EVERY time you clicked the shutter.  Some poeple ^^^ are just to stubborn to accept defeat.

OK ok ok ok... whoa now hold the phone... Everybody just take it easy, I don't want to see people getting banned over heated opinions.

I tell you what: I will get a website and ftp server setup later today, and publish the information for you guys to use.

cpt: PM me your email address and I'll give you a usernmae and password for ftp access. I'll setup a user directory only you can access.

everyone else: Whatever space I can get leftover... I will be happy to create another directory to contain any and all photos the server will hold.

End result: we should have a place for all of the cpt's pics, displayed for everyone to see. Along with that, I will make a very simple website to provide navigation to whatever photos / groups of photos that others post as well.

Uploads: If there is a problem with images or heck, even videos, being too large (say over 1GB) of an attachment for email, then we can work out a username and password so you can have access to the ftp site restricted by directory. Don't want any acusations or accidents regarding deleted items. This way it will be on my shoulders to do my best to keep it straight.

I have to go do a job a couple of hours away right now... will take me most if not all of the day, so bear with me... I'll hopefully have it up by later tonight.

Take it easy everybody and let's not lose any accounts on FES over this eh?

- Optimus

outstanding.  we all owe you thanks, including myself.  i'm not surprised that it took another re'er to pony up the resources for enhancing the knowledge base for the pursuit of understanding the real nature of the earth.  (well that and it's also statistically more likely to be an re'er.)  it sure as noodles wasn't going to be poodles - and surely not caboodles, if you get my drift.

i've pm'ed you my email address.

As for cpt:  Good job with those pics.  I doubt the wave would last for 40 seconds, or they would pop up EVERY time you clicked the shutter.  Some poeple ^^^ are just to stubborn to accept defeat.

Why wouldn't the wave last 40 seconds? It's moving towards the camera right? If you're talking about a good distance between the camera and the ship, a wave could be moving towards you over the entire sequence of shots shown here.

I think video would actually make more sense for this experiment. If you took video over say 15 minutes and plotted the distance from a specific point on the ship to the surface of the water for each frame, you'd get a handle on variability.

I'm a bit curious about the range all this is taking place at, which you can't really tell from the pictures. cwolfe claimed that 6 miles was too short to notice the curvature of the earth. After doing some quick math I worked out that the "bump" obstructing your view at 6 miles would be less than a couple of inches high. So can someone with knowledge of how big this ship is give us a good estimate on range?

Calm down, Engy, it's not really that much of a rant. 

What about the last 27 of them?  Were those rants enough?  How about all those times I've handed out warnings, only for them to be ignored? 

Quote from: Trekky0623 on December 29, 2007, 09:23:29 AM

Calm down, Engy, it's not really that much of a rant. 

What about the last 27 of them?  Were those rants enough?  How about all those times I've handed out warnings, only for them to be ignored? 

i have heeded each and every one of your warnings.  i also believe i have been behaving much better than half of the typical attacks that go on here, which i've understandably used as my normative guide to what is acceptable.  but, i will try harder.  i don't mind trying harder than everyone else.  done it all my life.  or, if you want to ban me, i wouldn't hold it against you either...

I don't see anyone else acting the way you do.  There are heated discussions, but you always throw in the ad hominems.  I've warned you numerous times, each being ignored.  I've banned people for less than what I have allowed you to get away with.  My tolerance of rule violations is not set in stone, as I give those with good arguments and seniority much leeway.  You've used up your leeway.

and zeroply.  ah yes, my favorite [censored].  your post does not deserve a reply: not just because i told you not to distract us from the real topics again, but because you can answer your own "objections" by looking at the data provided.  if you follow the links above (imagine that!), you will find a similar crop of the same ship, shot from 4 ft. lower elevation, ten minutes later.  looks the same.  no phantom wave.  i am not going to bother myself to follow the links that are uncumbent on you to do for even the most basic of due diligence.  you go off now see for yourself.  after you do this, then perhaps you might be allowed to participate in the conversation.

as for the estimated range, again: do your due diligence, it has been outlined before and the method of estimation defined and open to debate.

I don't see anyone else acting the way you do.  There are heated discussions, but you always throw in the ad hominems.  I've warned you numerous times, each being ignored.  I've banned people for less than what I have allowed you to get away with.  My tolerance of rule violations is not set in stone, as I give those with good arguments and seniority much leeway.  You've used up your leeway.

read and understood.  i know you don't think so, but i have heeded every one of your warnings.  i would have been much worse otherwise.  granted, without purposefulness or awareness, i have surely slowly de-evolved after warnings (it's not like i'm trying to push the boundaries).  but hey, i am used to happily playing by the rules of others and excelling, even if i don't agree with them (in this case, it so happens that i do agree - i know cognitively that civil debate is always better).  i'm sure it's a challenge, but your efforts are not for naught, and you seem to do a good job at it.  don't give up on your basically good but unruly students...

Cap, if I'm not mistaken we're currently discussing the possibility of a wave in the foreground distorting your measurements. Since that's the main discussion my question can't really be distracting from it. The reason I need the distance (to the ship from the camera) is to calculate what amount of water would be expected based on a RE model with ~ 4000mile radium Earth. I'm talking about the specific pictures you just posted, I don't see any information in this thread.

Trekky did a good calculation for horizon dropoff at 6 miles, I'm doing mine a bit differently but I'll have something for you guys today. Have to go on a backpacking trip and I'm not going to haul 15lbs of electronics to continue posting so I'll try to wrap up my position today and pick up the discussion when I get back Tuesday.

cwolfe made a very good point in that Rowbotham's experiment might have been flawed because the distance was too short. If so, it certainly relates to your experiment too. Only way to know is to do the numbers.

Ok, I posted details of my work in the other thread so I'm going to be brief here. Given points A and B which are d miles apart, in this diagram h will be the amount of obstruction. I'm using this instead of the horizon dropoff trekky calculated since we're talking about what we expect to see between the camera and the ship, and h yields that quite nicely.

We assume radius of Earth r=3950.



Details in other thread, but bottom line is h = 3950( 1 - cos( d / 7900 ) )

I ran calculation for 6 miles and converted to feet on the last line:

sage: d=6
sage: h=3950 * ( 1 - cos( d / 7900.0 ) )
sage: h * 5280
6.01518958428837

So if the cargo ship were 6 miles away, you would only expect slightly over 6ft of water to obstruct your view. Obviously even one atypical wave which is only 3-4 ft different from the others would destroy the accuracy of the results.

Hence my request for the distance to the ship. If it's not great enough, the waves make the experiment meaningless.

That's good, but there's one flaw.

The person's line of sight is probably not going to be like this:




It will probably be more like this, with the person looking straight out, not down:




Or they would be looking at the horizon:




NOTE: These pictures are extremely exaggerated.  The second and third picture would most probably have NO noticeable difference in the line of sight.

Better illustration:

Update:

Waiting for website to be activated. I think many will have a good laugh at the name, but it will be a dual purpose site. My wife is a graphics designer and does a TON of stuff on Second Life, and is into Transformers, etc.

So .. without further ado... www.chicksdiggiantrobots.com

Of course the site for now will be very basic until I actually build the site up. There will be a link on the main page for our purposes, I have purchased 1TB of storage space with 5 TB of traffic every month to cope with any and all uploads / downloads and site traffic.

(Therefore, the 9 GB won't be a problem )

The wife is looking forward to getting her designs and information on the site, and to "featuring" our site within. Will also post a direct link to our page once I've put it up.

Suggestions? Comments? Things you want to see on it, etc.

Thanks,
- Optimus

excellent.  love the domain name.  is it ready for uploading pics?

re: estimated distance to ship: can be found in this post. 

it is kind of silly to be arguing about the distance to the ship.  the distance to the islands are a known and precise fact.  but the distance to the ship is necessarily a guess, albeit an informed one from a trained eye made on-site (and definitely better than the ones made above).  but still, it is an unacceptably large variable to justify arguing about it.  the good new though is that it is far from unknowable.  if someone were determined enough, the shot and camera specs could be used to determine arc minutes, then bumped up against the most common cargo ship size for the bay area (possibly even profile matched), and trigonometry could do the rest to arrive at a more confident and precise estimate. 

shot of same ship ten minutes later and 4 ft. lower in elevation (still no wave) can be found in this set.

i find it enormously amusing that people make their own guesses on the distance, and argue "this shot cannot be".  and yet, it is.  i don't care if it supports a fe or an re.  it is what it is, and so are 29 more shots just like it.

Ok... website is up and running. cpt, you and raist now have personal ftp and email accounts per request.

I have emailed you both the login details for both.

The website is operational, yet of course incomplete. I will write up some things for the pages later today, or possibly tomorrow depends on how things go today.

Also, please remember that this will be a 'matter of fact' site. So as fun as it is to cut loose here in these forums... keep your submissions clean and to the point, and your images the same

Anyone is welcome to use this system. I will not automate it via forms or whatever. I've learned my lesson the hard way on this in the past.

If you'd like your own ftp account / email account just give the word. I have setup defaults of 250MB email space to account for any samples you want to include in your submissions for approval. Once approved, you may email me:
[email protected]
and include your 'formal' Article and upload any media to the ftp server.

I will post your article on the page and provide links for any media you upload per your format requests.

Enjoy!
- Optimus

Whoops! Okay... *now* the website is up and running. lol!

This thread is awesome.

You still haven't addressed my issue about subconscious bias and the need for double-blind methodology. You don't need to believe me. Go to your local university and give a physics prof a copy of my post. He will confirm the problems in your methodology. If we had given the camera to Tom and asked him to take pictures, they would have probably come out completely different because he would have squeezed the shutter at different points in time with different waves in the foreground. I have illustrated a clear mechanism whereby your subconscious bias can affect the results - end of story...

You really seem serious... I cannot imagine somebody making such a mistake, but every day comes with its own surprises.

There is no need to make double-blind experiments when there are no subjective evaluations made. And your idea that there will be a difference of several meters between the apparent height of a cargo ship depending on a difference of less than a second in the moment in which the photo is taken is preposterous.

There are only two ways in which this could happen: Either the ship is jumping up and down with a vertical speed of several meters per second, or the waves in the sea between the observer and the ship are tsunamis. Do you think a ship is suddenly completely visible from the line of flotation upwards, and a fraction of a second afterwards it is mostly under the observed horizon, and nobody notices? Nobody except you has even proposed that possibility. Maybe you have not seen ships and landmasses at a distance before, but countless millions have, and they have not reported what you got out of your... hat.