Sun setting

Hi All
Can someone please explain in detail what happens with the setting sun?
I would have thought that the sun would be significantly smaller prior to disappearing from sight. And is the sun still visible with a telescope once it has disappeared to the naked eye.? I don't have an unobstructed ocean view so perhaps someone who does could shed some light. Pardon the pun

Hi All
Can someone please explain in detail what happens with the setting sun?
I would have thought that the sun would be significantly smaller prior to disappearing from sight. And is the sun still visible with a telescope once it has disappeared to the naked eye.? I don't have an unobstructed ocean view so perhaps someone who does could shed some light. Pardon the pun

Right so if it "just got smaller" and farther away and you could use a telescope to see it then there would still be light reaching you at night. So this is wrong.

Remember, oxygen has a color, although very light, looking through a lot of oxygen at once layers it and makes it eventually so that you cant see anything. This is one of the reasons we can't see the Eiffel tower from here, too much oxygen in the way blocking the view (as well as other things). Hope this explained what you were asking for! 

Also anybody know what happened to the emoticons?

Thanks. Atmospherics could potentially  account for the sun fading into the distance but what I see is a fully visible sun appearing to dip below a horizon line it doesn't appear to  fade behind a thick wall of oxygen. It is likely I just don't understand the concept but going simply on what my senses tell me a wall of oxygen obscuring the light doesn't seem to account for the sun setting.

Having considered the atmospheric conditions, and watching a video that attempts to demonstrate the sun appearing to go down because of perspective I have another theory that I would be interested in comment on.

The youtube video that I'm sure you're all familiar with, has a camera pointing at the edge of a table, then the person moves a coin backward along the table away from the camera and the coin eventually disappears below the horizon.

The problem with this video is that the camera appears to be mounted just below the edge of the table so of course the coin appears to sink as it get further away. Another video has the camera mounted just above the edge of the table and it clearly shows the coin only gets smaller as it moves further away which is what you would expect.

Now I think inadvertently the first video has it right, whether there is an attempted deception in the setup I cannot say, however if you consider the earth to be the table, there is a translucent layer of atmosphere on the table which would essentially make the observer (at great distance) always appear to be viewing the earth plane from just below the edge of the table like the coin demonstration shows.

I wonder if the atmosphere being translucent would infact cause the sun to appear to go behind an edge as if you were sitting in a hole and your eyes were below surface level.

Does that make any sense at all??

Having considered the atmospheric conditions, and watching a video that attempts to demonstrate the sun appearing to go down because of perspective I have another theory that I would be interested in comment on.

The youtube video that I'm sure you're all familiar with, has a camera pointing at the edge of a table, then the person moves a coin backward along the table away from the camera and the coin eventually disappears below the horizon.

The problem with this video is that the camera appears to be mounted just below the edge of the table so of course the coin appears to sink as it get further away. Another video has the camera mounted just above the edge of the table and it clearly shows the coin only gets smaller as it moves further away which is what you would expect.

Now I think inadvertently the first video has it right, whether there is an attempted deception in the setup I cannot say, however if you consider the earth to be the table, there is a translucent layer of atmosphere on the table which would essentially make the observer (at great distance) always appear to be viewing the earth plane from just below the edge of the table like the coin demonstration shows.

I wonder if the atmosphere being translucent would infact cause the sun to appear to go behind an edge as if you were sitting in a hole and your eyes were below surface level.

Does that make any sense at all??

Yes this is exactly right. This is paired with the atmosphere and the oxygen gradually making it harder to see the already far away Sun, blocking out the final rays of sunlight from reaching you.

Yes this is exactly right. This is paired with the atmosphere and the oxygen gradually making it harder to see the already far away Sun, blocking out the final rays of sunlight from reaching you.

How does atmospheric haze explain the sunset? That was used for explaining the horizon, or basically why we could only see a relatively short distance on a flat plane, but for sunsets? How does that relate? The sun is quite easy to see at sunset, since it appears less bright, and it can be seen gradually descending bottom-first into the horizon, but wouldn't the sun just fade out of view instead of gradually descend in a clear view?
It seems that would be like saying that UA explains orbits along with gravity on Earth just like Universal Gravitation explains both, which wouldn't be so of course.

Quote from: Straight on November 21, 2017, 09:07:15 PM

Yes this is exactly right. This is paired with the atmosphere and the oxygen gradually making it harder to see the already far away Sun, blocking out the final rays of sunlight from reaching you.

How does atmospheric haze explain the sunset? That was used for explaining the horizon, or basically why we could only see a relatively short distance on a flat plane, but for sunsets? How does that relate? The sun is quite easy to see at sunset, since it appears less bright, and it can be seen gradually descending bottom-first into the horizon, but wouldn't the sun just fade out of view instead of gradually descend in a clear view?
It seems that would be like saying that UA explains orbits along with gravity on Earth just like Universal Gravitation explains both, which wouldn't be so of course.

Just to be clear I am neither for or against FE theory I simply feel that it raises enough questions to merit further investigation.
My idea suggesting that the atmosphere would possibly account for how we observe the sunset is like this.
 
If you consider the atmosphere as a thick layer of gas on the earth plane that gets increasingly translucent closer to the ground but clear at higher altitude.

When viewed at a great distance the lower denser part transitioning to clear would appear as a relatively sharp line across the horizon. This is where visibility stops, though higher up just above that line everything is still quite visible in the higher clearer atmosphere. All because of perspective.

You could demonstrate this by having an image starting black at one end of the page and transitioning through greys all the way to white. Then compress the image top to bottom say 100 times. Now the grey transition would virtually disappear and look like a line.

When viewed at a great distance the lower denser part transitioning to clear would appear as a relatively sharp line across the horizon. This is where visibility stops, though higher up just above that line everything is still quite visible in the higher clearer atmosphere. All because of perspective.

Why at the horizon line? Atmospheric Haze has a direction?
Oh, you are saying it is perspective?

Why at the horizon line? Atmospheric Haze has a direction?
Oh, you are saying it is perspective?

Yes I think perhaps the lower denser atmosphere would appear at a distance because of perspective to be essentially a solid wall that the sun would disappear behind, as if you were viewing an object moving away from just below the edge of the surface, like the table and coin demonstration.

Or perhaps think of it like this.
Imagine the atmosphere is perfectly clear and you could see all the way to the edge of the plane.
Now imagine in the very far distance there is a 10km high solid wall, which at a great distance would appear to be only a few millimeters in height because of perspective.
As the sun moves across the sky you would have full visibility until the bottom edge reached the wall, then the sun would begin to disappear behind the wall.

I think possibly the dense lower atmosphere is like that wall.

Quote from: AltSpace on November 22, 2017, 01:37:41 PM

Why at the horizon line? Atmospheric Haze has a direction?
Oh, you are saying it is perspective?

Yes I think perhaps the lower denser atmosphere would appear at a distance because of perspective to be essentially a solid wall that the sun would disappear behind, as if you were viewing an object moving away from just below the edge of the surface, like the table and coin demonstration.

Or perhaps think of it like this.
Imagine the atmosphere is perfectly clear and you could see all the way to the edge of the plane.
Now imagine in the very far distance there is a 10km high solid wall, which at a great distance would appear to be only a few millimeters in height because of perspective.
As the sun moves across the sky you would have full visibility until the bottom edge reached the wall, then the sun would begin to disappear behind the wall.

I think possibly the dense lower atmosphere is like that wall.

But when you watch the sunset, it retains it's size while dipping into what is basically indistinguishable from the ground.


So, the sun would have to basically dip into the ground, since the wall is much too small at that distance (as you said, it would be a thick low layer that the sun hides behind), so at that angular diameter, the ratios don't seem to add up.
Basically, how does the sun at it's apparent size fit into hiding behind what is indistinguishable from the ground?
It is the equivalent of trying to hide an elephant behind a 8 inch thick small tree, which wouldn't work successfully.

Yeh I see what you are saying.
I may try and set up an experiment or computer model to see if it holds up at all. I still feel like it could be possible because of the distances we are dealing with.
But thanks to everyone who has chipped in it's been an interesting discussion so far.

So, the sun would have to basically dip into the ground

Just to be my own devils advocate, there is also the question as to why the stars would then appear all the way nice and clear down to the horizon, they would perhaps disappear just above the horizon.
Unless the obscured visibility through the atmosphere at low levels is actually caused by the sun lighting up the atmosphere and when the sun is gone the visibility returns.
That sun image also is unusual, with that shape distortion at the bottom, what is that?

Yes this is exactly right. This is paired with the atmosphere and the oxygen gradually making it harder to see the already far away Sun, blocking out the final rays of sunlight from reaching you.

Ok, explain this:

Sun is too far to see because oxygen blocks its light.
But top half of mountain 2 miles behind you is still illuminated, and light reflected to you has another 2 miles, and still reach your eyes.
And why is upper half still illuminated and lower isn't, when lower is closer due to conical shape of the mountain?

Get the picture?