Your logic is fallacious. Jupiter is not seen at the horizon.
WHAT?!?! How can you simply guess - or barefacedly lie about such things?
Here is a photo of the moon and Jupiter on the horizon:
I can clearly see Jupiter set from my back porch every evening - it's a naked eye object.
Also, what about this picture? It's a photo of the recent solar eclipse at sunset:
The sun is pretty dim at this point - yet it's still a perfect circle. (Google "solar eclipse at sunset" and you'll find a bunch more).
The absolute intensity of the sun is the same. The sun is bright enough to project onto the atmosphere. From that point it may dim with increased distance. The same may be true of the stars or the moon.
Your logic that the sun should follow the same rules as a less luminous object is not equatable. The sun exists as a bright object and we are seeing it when it is diluted after it has passed through a lot of atmosphere. The situations is not comparable to bodies which are non-luminous or of less luminosity.
Can anyone understand what Tom just said here?
The absolute intensity of the sun is the same.
Er..no...the world around you goes DARK during a solar eclipse. It's like midnight...there is no way the intensity is the same. The moon is blocking almost all of the light from it.
The sun is bright enough to project onto the atmosphere.
How can anything project onto something that's transparent?!? This is just babble.
From that point it may dim with increased distance. The same may be true of the stars or the moon.
But the Wiki says that only INTENSE light does this. There are stars that are extremely dim.
So are you saying that there are THREE completely separate mechanisms?
1) For "intense" light sources (even if blocked almost completely by the moon), then the intensity of the light makes them bigger in defiance of perspective (even "altered perspective").
2) For Jupiter - they fade out before reaching the horizon (clearly, demonstrably, untrue).
3) For stars and moon...which are dim...something else?!? (We can easily see the moon set without the moon getting smaller - that's a naked eye test!)
Tom - your explanations are spiralling away into confusion here.
Could you perhaps take the time to write a simple description about how sunsets/moonsets/planetsets and starsets happen - checking first your facts about what can and cannot be seen - and accounting both for the depression of the object onto the horizon AND the surprising fact that these things don't get smaller with range - no matter the brightness.
Because right now, you're giving a very tangled unclear explanation.
(Oh...and DO tell us how the photons get from the physical location of the sun/moon into my eyes at sunset! We're all sitting on the edges of our seats waiting for your pronouncement on this one!)