I was browsing around in the archives and came across this thread again. I'm pretty sure I answered this a long time ago in another thread, but the night picture of the dirigible at the edge of the atmosphere is explained by the idea that we are looking at at an illuminated circle that is very far away and tilted with perspective.
A lot of the far horizon is very bright and washed out in brightness, but that brightness generally takes the shape of a circle in the far distance where it is washed out.
Quite apart from the shape, just
how do you explain the sun right in the horizonYou have simply stated numerous times that it is just perspective, but that is rubbish!
Yes I would agree that perspective would reduce the elevation angle of the sun from as much as 90° at midday to a much lower angle at sunset (that I would claim would be around 20° - give or take a lot), but
any reduction in elevation angle must also be accompanied by a
reduction in the apparent size of the sun (which we do not see at all).
You can't have one without the other!
You claim that we do not know how perspective works or light travels over such "vast distances" (your idea of vast does not match mine, but whatever!), but you must be consistent.
You cannot claim that the atmo
something magnifies the size of the sun to quite coincidentally keep the sun exactly the same as it sets
[1] and yet perspective lowers the sun from around 20° to apparently
below the visible horizon. These effects would apply largely to each.
And another critical point is that you might try to say that "refraction" at the "vacuum-air" interface might help - sorry, no such luck for two reasons:
- The largest refract from that interface is around 0.5°.
- The refraction would make the sun appear at a higher angle. This leads to the observable fact (on the Globe where these measurements are meaningful) that sunrise is about 2 minutes earlier and sunset about minutes later than the "astronomical times" would indicate.
So, if you are going to make claims the are contrary to the accepted explanation YOU are the ones that must provide the evidence to back up your claims!
Some claims
contrary to the accepted explanation are quite justified! But, they must be backed by evidence - and we have not seen any.
[1] Mind you for most of the time the suns rays are passing through relatively little air.