Horizon rises as altitude is gained

When you are traveling in an airplane and look out the window you see the horizon rising up to your level of view. This is what one would expect on a flat or a globe earth. It is due to perspective. We see the sun rising from and setting at the horizon also and flat earthers claim the sun is rising and setting due to perspective. Which could be the case. So in the case of the sun they are happy to accept it, which they claim is about 8000 miles up, coming down to the horizon, yet they are surprised the horizon comes up to their eye level when they are only about 10 miles up in the air.

As we go up we have to expect the horizon line, which is due to perspective, will sill be at our level. This is the expected behavior either on a globe of 8,000 miles in diameter or on a flat plane.

We can only rise up such a small distance relative to the size of the earth. So in this small distance the horizon will behave as it always does according to the laws of perspective.

If the earth is a globe then if we could rise up high enough we would be able to see the edges of the globe, but this would certainly not be possible at 10 or 20 miles up.

This is not proof the earth is flat. This is the behavior we would expect rising up from a globe of 8000 miles in diameter or rising up from a flat plane.

 

Supporting Flat Earth Proofs

  • 2) The horizon always rises to the eye level of the observer as altitude is gained, so you never have to look down to see it.

3 Replies to “Horizon rises as altitude is gained”

  1. Gary Smith

    This is way too advanced a study. Ship’s sail goes down over the curvature at about 13-15 miles away. Ship starts laying over too.

    • James Clary

      And then, while watching the ship disappear, you bring out telephoto lens or binoculars and ship appears again. Explain that to me please. Thank you

      • Yann Vernier

        This is an outright lie, an attempt to conflate the occlusion of the horizon with the reduction in angular size from perspective. Ships do not “appear again” with a telescope, you merely see more detail, which does not include anything covered by the horizon.

        Side note, this article is also misdescribing something. While the horizon appears to follow along, and that’s expected by how perspective works, it does not rise as fast as the observer. The dip to the horizon is simply too small to see without a horizontal reference to compare to, at altitudes we normally reach. The fact that the horizon is further away the higher you are is evidence of the convex level. Lookout towers wouldn’t help at sea if it were flat.

        The reason the horizon “rises when altitude is gained” (but less than the observer) is that we see more of the planet – because we can see over the boundary that was the horizon at a lower altitude. They are different horizons. All of them fall away slowly with altitude by perspective (parallax), the mechanism this article referred to.

        The horizon is always “the edges of the globe”, merely from your perspective. Perspective explains how the rest of the planet can be occluded by the range you see. This is the explanation for why photos from space show various scales of ground features relative to the circle; they’re taken from different distances, and “full disc” is always a spherical cap.

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