[bobo]

If the world had been flat, then two sticks in different locations would produce the same shadow: But they don't. This is because the earth is round, and not flat.

[rabinoz]

The sun shines light from all directions on its surface. It's not a lamp. It's light is limited in its duration across the earth's surface because of the not-perfectly-transparent atmosphere, and its decent into the surface is an illusion of perspective.
The sun and moon at a level of about 3000 miles above the earth are not within the atmosphere of the earth, and so the light between those two objects is unimpeded.

How do you explain day/night cycles and seasons?
Day and night cycles are easily explained on a flat earth. The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When it is over your head, it's day. When it's not, it's night. The sun acts like a spotlight and shines downward as it moves. 

It unequivocally says The sun acts like a spotlight and shines downward as it moves. And Junker says we should consult the Wiki!

[1] A "a shadow from the sun illuminating", a shadow illuminating, really? Some better wording is surely called for!
[2] The Wiki also says the moon "wobbles" up and down, but I fail to see how a "wobble" can help with the moon some 12,000 miles from the sun.
[3] Remember we are assured that "a natural shadow from the sun illuminating half of the spherical moon at any one time." So, presumably the moon gets its illumination from the sun.

In the sentence "When one observes the phases of the moon he sees the moon's day and night, a shadow from the sun illuminating half of the spherical moon at any one time"  it clearly says that the sun is the thing doing the illuminating in that sentence. The words sun and illuminating are directly next to each other, while shadow and illuminating are not. We've explained this to you several times now.

Yes, and the Royal We is still wrong! In "a shadow from the sun illuminating" the phrase "from the sun" is a phrase describing "the shadow". The sentence clearly claims that "the shadow is coming from the sun" and that this shadow is what is "illuminating half of the spherical moon at any one time". If you can interpret "a shadow from the sun" any other way we speak different languages (Mind, from my time in the USA that is not so far fetched.) But that is a minor issue. I certainly accept the intention of what the Wiki says.

We can accept that the moon somehow gets illuminated (sunrise and sunset can wait), but the bigger issue is how (without magically bendy light) anyone can see a fully illuminated moon.

The observer directly under the moon will see just a half moon, the other observer will see nearer to a full moon right on the horizon.

[rabinoz]

How does it answer the question on how the full moon appears to be full for everybody though, from the peremiter of the night shadow to people standing directly beneath it?

I believe that perspective behaves differently than is assumed by classical Ancient Greek perspective over very large distances. When the moon sets you are not looking at its "side". There are no real world examples to tell us the truth of perspective at large scales, and it is a matter left to assumption.

Imagine that we have a giant solved rubix cube:

When the rubix cube is 10 feet above you imagine that we are looking at its white underside. It is directly over you and we can only see white. Now imagine that the rubix cube starts slowly receding away from you into the distance. You will quickly see one of colors sides of the cube as it recedes and changes angle. It will get far enough that the white bottom of the cube will go away and you will only see it from the colored side.

Now imagine that we have a giant rubix cube 30,000 feet above you. It is directly over you. When the rubix cube recedes away from you into the distance, it will take much longer for you to see the colored side of the rubix cube, and for the white bottom to go away.

We assert that the sun and moon are at such a great distance in the sky that they hardly change angle at all when the move over the observer's limited viewing area.

I haven't the slightest idea what your Rubik's cube is supposed to represent, but please remember that (according the FE) the moon is just 3,000 miles up, so after it has moved 3,000 miles away "horizontally"  the angle of the moon will have changed 45°.  That is only about 2 hours after midnight. The real moon keeps the same face to us (very closely) the whole night.

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

The illumination of the Moon in your model requires too many assumption and complication.
Tell me how this model isn't simpler:

How in this model is the moon full when it is "behind" the Earth in relation to the Sun?

[UnionsOfSolarSystemPlanet]

The illumination of the Moon in your model requires too many assumption and complication.
Tell me how this model isn't simpler:

How in this model is the moon full when it is "behind" the Earth in relation to the Sun?

Because this is a 2D representation of it, viewed from sideways the Moon is either above or below the ecliptic, were the Moon to cross the ecliptic during a full Moon, a Lunar eclipse occur.

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

So the moon is continuously above or below the Earth entirely? So it can get direct sunlight?

Otherwise, we'd have the bottom or the top of the moon getting shadows right?

All the while the face of the moon still points perfectly at Earth from wherever you are, correct?

[BlueMoon]

So the moon is continuously above or below the Earth entirely? So it can get direct sunlight?

Otherwise, we'd have the bottom or the top of the moon getting shadows right?

All the while the face of the moon still points perfectly at Earth from wherever you are, correct?

Correct-ish. 
The moon isn't always pointing perfectly at earth.  It librates throughout its orbit, as shown here: 



And here's the plane that it is on:



You sound like you're starting to get it, but you also sound incredulous, so I can't tell. 

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

So the moon is continuously above or below the Earth entirely? So it can get direct sunlight?

Otherwise, we'd have the bottom or the top of the moon getting shadows right?

All the while the face of the moon still points perfectly at Earth from wherever you are, correct?

Correct-ish. 
The moon isn't always pointing perfectly at earth.  It librates throughout its orbit, as shown here: 



And here's the plane that it is on:



You sound like you're starting to get it, but you also sound incredulous, so I can't tell.

Are there any actual photos or videos of the moon doing that? That looks like a bad CGI to me.

What I still don't understand, even if the moon is 5 degrees and 9 minutes off of the Earth's ecliptic plane, it doesn't seem like the sun light should be lighting up the surface of the moon, through the Earth. Are we saying that the light bends around Earth much to the same way Flat Earth Theory is often criticized for how it explains light from the sun?

[BlueMoon]

Are there any actual photos or videos of the moon doing that? That looks like a bad CGI to me.

What I still don't understand, even if the moon is 5 degrees and 9 minutes off of the Earth's ecliptic plane, it doesn't seem like the sun light should be lighting up the surface of the moon, through the Earth. Are we saying that the light bends around Earth much to the same way Flat Earth Theory is often criticized for how it explains light from the sun?

That's just a simulated view, for the sake of smoothness.  You can find many more pictures here. 
Light does bend around the earth due to gravity, but that's negligible.  If you want to know why it's still illuminated during a total lunar eclipse, it's because sunlight is refracting through the atmosphere.  But what I suspect you're really asking is why the moon isn't eclipsed every orbit.  That's because they are so far apart.  Here's a scale image. 

[andruszkow]

Plus the fact that none of those drawings are to scale, which is astronomers biggest problem with educating the masses.

If you have a standard desk globus, the moon is about the size of a tennis ball, and 10 meters away.

[rabinoz]

So the moon is continuously above or below the Earth entirely? So it can get direct sunlight?

Otherwise, we'd have the bottom or the top of the moon getting shadows right?

All the while the face of the moon still points perfectly at Earth from wherever you are, correct?

Correct-ish. 
The moon isn't always pointing perfectly at earth. 

It librates throughout its orbit, as shown here:

And here's the plane that it is on:

You sound like you're starting to get it, but you also sound incredulous, so I can't tell.

Are there any actual photos or videos of the moon doing that? That looks like a bad CGI to me.

What I still don't understand, even if the moon is 5 degrees and 9 minutes off of the Earth's ecliptic plane, it doesn't seem like the sun light should be lighting up the surface of the moon, through the Earth. Are we saying that the light bends around Earth much to the same way Flat Earth Theory is often criticized for how it explains light from the sun?

You ask "Are there any actual photos or videos of the moon doing that? That looks like a bad CGI to me." Why does it look like "bad CGI"? and whyever would anyone bother to make a fake CGI of something that anyone can check up on by simply looking up at night? It wouldn't make any sense at all - who would gain out of such a deception? Anyone can take moon photos, just need the right times to show libration.

Full moon at night

Almost full moon in daylight

If you wonder about how a (nearly) full moon can be visible while it is daylight, the photo was taken at 6:07 am on Sep 30, 2015.

Then the next diagram is not to scale - it is not easy getting sun, earth and moon drawn to scale, but I tried for the earth and moon in:

This shows the earth and moon with the sizes and distance to scale (sorry the sun is over to the left about 600 screen widths!).

So can you see how the moon can be illuminated by the light from the sun shining past the earth (just grazing in this diagram).
When the moon is exactly behind the earth we have a lunar eclipse.

Maybe now you can explain with diagrams exactly these events can possibly[1] occur on the Flat Earth model of earth, sun and moon - it's all in the Wiki!

[1] "Bendy" light not allowed.

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

You talk about bendy light a lot but isnt that exact type of light you would need to illuminate the moon evenly on a full moon? Bluemoon calls it refraction through our atmosphere. Sounds like bendy light to me.

[BlueMoon]

You talk about bendy light a lot but isnt that exact type of light you would need to illuminate the moon evenly on a full moon? Bluemoon calls it refraction through our atmosphere. Sounds like bendy light to me.

No, refraction only applies during an eclipse.  Remember, the moon is at a 5 degree incline.  Most of the time the earth and the moon are not lined up at full moon. 

[Venus]

If NASA was not part of a conspiracy then it would prove the Earth is a spheroid orbited by a moon which both orbit the sun a long with other planets and moons.  So by necessity any thing involving satellites or space travel has to be fake.

The evidence provided by science is flawed because they are assuming the Earth is a spheroid and/or scientist are part of the conspiracy.  For the Earth to be flat I lean towards a lot scientist involved in the Earth sciences would have to be part of the conspiracy.  Many calculations, observations, experiments, etc are done assuming the Earth is ball like.  That implies the error would resonate through many fields of study and become apparent.  So IMHO it is safe to assume many scientist would be involved covering up the shape of the Earth.

For 2500 years thousands of Astronomers have spent millions of hours observing the stars, planets and their movements and documented their observations!!

Briefly ...
6th Century BC - An ancient Greek Astronomer called Anaximander first proposed a spherical earth 2500 years ago.
280BC (approx) - Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system ie spherical earth and planet orbit the sun, moon orbits the earth, earth rotates to give day and night. He even correctly predicted that earth was the 3rd planet from the sun and the correct order for the other planets which are visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately his work was only mentioned by others, and only rediscovered after Copernicus
240BC (approx) - Eratosthenes used the length of the sun's shadow at two different latitudes to calculate the earth's circumference (with amazing accuracy for the time)
1543 - Copernicus publishes his heliocentric model of the solar system
1608 - A Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey invents the telescope
1609 - Galileo uses a telescope and discovers 4 of Jupiter's moons, The Milky Way Galaxy and Moon craters
1609 - Kepler puts forward his first and second laws of planetary motion
1668 - Newton builds the first reflecting telescope
1758 - Halley correctly predicts the return of Halley's comet in 1758
1905 - Einstein introduces the Theory of Relativity
1923 - Hubble shows the existence of other galaxies
1930 - Pluto is doscovered
1957 - Sputnik is launched by the Russians - the first man made object to orbit the earth
October 1st 1958 - NASA is established in response to the launch of Sputnik by Russia. In the middle of the Cold War it was not acceptable to America that Russia should lead in the "Space Race"

My question to you is ... If NASA is lying to us ... why did all of those thousands of Astronomers who lived BEFORE NASA lie and continue to say that the earth is a sphere? Who paid them??

[atmoSPHERE]

Ah the smug nature of the rounders comments... Can you feel it?

You guys talk a big game but yet still NONE of you have your own evidence the earth is round.

All any Ball Earth believers do is post links from "science" websites and use that as their evidence.

That is another man's work, not yours.

If round earth is so easy to prove, then  why don't any of you have your own evidence?

The fact that and the way that rounders even attempt to defend round earth tells me a lot about this so called science you all spew.

Most rounders have never even left their own country, state, home town, yet you all are so certain of the shape of the earth.

Rounders go through their entire life believing all they read about science. Never once having an original thought, experiment, or ground breaking discovery.

Space is nothing more than a mathematical theory, never proven, never explored, never conquered by man, ever.

The science you know is nothing more than complicated math to complete a puzzle of illusion for the weak to snack on.

Jokes on you. Go back to your History Channel and Discovery Channel for your daily brainwashing. Then, please, come back and "educate" the less fortunate and under studied some more...

Yes, I do know that I did not read the entire thread.

Your post is a laugh indeed. Where's your evidence? You came to a thread asking FE'ers for evidence of 'flat Earth', and then said WE ('rounders') had to supply YOU with evidence! Well, here's my evidence:
1. Tides
2. Weather
3. Magnetic poles on either side of the GLOBE
4. Phases in the Moon
5. Lack of evidence for 'flat Earth theory'
6. 'FET' rewrites half (I'm exaggerating here) of the existing apparent laws of physics.
7. The Earth looks curved
I could keep going. All of these instances of plain observation are incongruent with 'FET'. Now, since I have provided my proofs for 'RET', would you be so kind as to supply us with some 'proofs' of your own?

[Rounder]

Are there any actual photos or videos of the moon doing that? That looks like a bad CGI to me.

Are you really wanting to sit through a video that lasts 708 hours?  That's how long an "actual video of the moon doing that" would take.  And if I were to provide one (which I can't, because as far as I know there isn't one), I don't know why anyone would expect you to accept it as being real, photos and videos being so easy to manipulate.  All of which is completely aside from the fact that no place on earth affords the opportunity to keep the moon visible for the entire shoot.  The only place one could do it would be from space.  I checked, and even at the south pole (and by round earth correlation, also at the north pole) the combination of the tilt of the earth's axis and the inclination of the moon's orbit will always cause it to set and rise once each during its 29 1/2 day period.  This month, for example, the moon sets tonight at 9:26pm south pole time (UTC +12 hours) and doesn't rise again for two weeks.  One could set up a camera to tilt and pan around and follow the moon through the polar sky the day it rises again, keeping it continuously in frame 24x7 from April 20th (two days before full moon) through May 4th (two days before new moon). 

Another option, if you're curious: I imagine that the moon is visible from your home when the weather is clear and the phases are right.  You could take a sequence of photos yourself and stitch them together.  This eliminates the possibility of a bad actor doing any "bad CGI" shenanigans to the resulting video.  And unlike many of the proposed "why don't you go do X or Y to prove something" posts here, this suggestion can be done very nearly for free, with equipment you probably already own, and requires no travel.  Your results will be close to the video shown here, within the limits of your equipment's resolution.

[rabinoz]

You talk about bendy light a lot but isnt that exact type of light you would need to illuminate the moon evenly on a full moon? Bluemoon calls it refraction through our atmosphere. Sounds like bendy light to me.

No you do not need "bendy light" to "illuminate the moon ..... on a full moon" (I purposely removed the evenly - see below).
The sun's light shines past the earth, because even at the time of a "full moon" the sun, earth and moon are never in perfect alignment[1].
When they are in perfect alignment we have a total lunar eclipse.

And yes, refraction is "bendy light", but the atmosphere will never (except in the most extreme cases of mirages)[2] bend light more than about 0.5°. The "bendy light" we complain about is the 20° of more required to make the flat earth sun of moon "appear to set". Big difference!

But again, why do you always take the "flat earth side" if you are this "flat earth agnostic". Just try to justify any of sun and moon rising and setting or moon phases with the explanations in the Wiki! See if any "Flat Earther" can explain what we see.

[1] I know you will think this through carefully and realise correctly that this means that the "full moon" we observe is no really a "perfect full moon". It is always slightly unevenly illuminated. Often you can see this from the shadows in the craters.

[2] This is a complicated issue too. This covers it is (too great) detail: Calculating Ray Bending, where he goes into "Circulating rays" as well.

[geckothegeek]

I'm probably going to get another warning for "off topic posting for this !  But I'm used to it !
But I mean this in defense of those who are accused of "Why should anyone believe in a flat earth ? "

After traveling through a lot  of  flatland on vacation trips in the USA I can see why a rancher out in West Texas (or  even the town  of West, Texas, which is in Central Texas. LOL )would believe the earth was flat. No offense intended to either of those.

In their daily jobs and leisure time since all they see every day is flat land in all directions they would have no reason for not believing that the earth was anything but flat. That is also assuming they might not have had much formal education or had even seen a globe. So it's a bit snobbish to call them idiots.

On the other hand, those of us who tend to be snobbish in calling flat earthers "idiot" are being unfair to them . We have had an unfair advantage of having had at least a minimum education and also going on to more specialized studies required in our jobs.Some of these regard taking into account the fact the earth is a globe. There
are many areas in this regard. We just take the fact that the earth is the globe that is sort of second nature to us.

All of this was intended to apologize for some of us calling flat earthers "idiots". You are just "not informed, ill inforned or mis  informed " in your belief that the earth is flat.
Maybe we "Round Earthers" have been a bit snobbish in calling those who are  less fortunate than we have been and calling flat earthers "idiots".

P.S.
I might add that I have had the advantage of having had at least an elementary and high school education, a little college, some military and civil service training courses, service in the navy and work in radar , radio and computers to bolster my knowledge in the  "round earth."  This is the way things work in the real world which we call "An Oblate Spheroid."

[geckothegeek]

If NASA was not part of a conspiracy then it would prove the Earth is a spheroid orbited by a moon which both orbit the sun a long with other planets and moons.  So by necessity any thing involving satellites or space travel has to be fake.

The evidence provided by science is flawed because they are assuming the Earth is a spheroid and/or scientist are part of the conspiracy.  For the Earth to be flat I lean towards a lot scientist involved in the Earth sciences would have to be part of the conspiracy.  Many calculations, observations, experiments, etc are done assuming the Earth is ball like.  That implies the error would resonate through many fields of study and become apparent.  So IMHO it is safe to assume many scientist would be involved covering up the shape of the Earth.

For 2500 years thousands of Astronomers have spent millions of hours observing the stars, planets and their movements and documented their observations!!

Briefly ...
6th Century BC - An ancient Greek Astronomer called Anaximander first proposed a spherical earth 2500 years ago.
280BC (approx) - Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system ie spherical earth and planet orbit the sun, moon orbits the earth, earth rotates to give day and night. He even correctly predicted that earth was the 3rd planet from the sun and the correct order for the other planets which are visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately his work was only mentioned by others, and only rediscovered after Copernicus
240BC (approx) - Eratosthenes used the length of the sun's shadow at two different latitudes to calculate the earth's circumference (with amazing accuracy for the time)
1543 - Copernicus publishes his heliocentric model of the solar system
1608 - A Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey invents the telescope
1609 - Galileo uses a telescope and discovers 4 of Jupiter's moons, The Milky Way Galaxy and Moon craters
1609 - Kepler puts forward his first and second laws of planetary motion
1668 - Newton builds the first reflecting telescope
1758 - Halley correctly predicts the return of Halley's comet in 1758
1905 - Einstein introduces the Theory of Relativity
1923 - Hubble shows the existence of other galaxies
1930 - Pluto is doscovered
1957 - Sputnik is launched by the Russians - the first man made object to orbit the earth
October 1st 1958 - NASA is established in response to the launch of Sputnik by Russia. In the middle of the Cold War it was not acceptable to America that Russia should lead in the "Space Race"

My question to you is ... If NASA is lying to us ... why did all of those thousands of Astronomers who lived BEFORE NASA lie and continue to say that the earth is a sphere? Who paid them??

If NASA has been lying  to us.....and all of those Astronomers.......how about all those sailors who lived before the Astromomers and continue to say that the earth is a  sphere ? But you know how sailors are !......You know ! ........ All those "sea stories" !

[rabinoz]

We send up high altitude balloons that can see the curvature of the earth.

You mean that you see the terminator line of the spotlight sun.

No, that's clearly different.

If the sun acts like a spotlight, just how does the moon get illuminated?

The Phases of the Moon
When one observes the phases of the moon he sees the moon's day and night, a shadow from the sun illuminating half of the spherical moon at any one time.
The lunar phases vary cyclically according to the changing geometry of the Moon and Sun, which are constantly wobbling up and down and exchange altitudes as they rotate around the North Pole.

Is there a special ray aimed at the moon?
I asked the same question here http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=4765.msg92513#msg92513 and the answers made no sense to me!