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Offline RonJ

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #60 on: December 12, 2018, 06:39:24 PM »
Your picture appears to show land ahead not just clouds.  The sun directly ahead makes it difficult to discern exactly.  What I've seen was in the afternoon with the sun behind and clearly lighting the tops of the clouds.  Even with a telescope you could see clouds all the way to the sea until we got closer.
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #61 on: December 12, 2018, 06:42:49 PM »
Any photos or videos that I might have would just be claimed to be be altered so there's no point to showing them.  No one on here as ever written down acceptable photo or video authentication standards that everyone could accept.  It would just take one person to say 'fake' and then everyone would believe it.   
Whether or not the photo is genuine isn't really even relevant, I just would like to visualize what it is you're claiming.

Quote
I tried to explain that perspective wasn't a factor in my observations.  We had a very good telescope on the bridge of the ship and we could only see the TOPS of the clouds at first.  As the ship progressed we could start to see more & more of the clouds until a small gap started to appear between the sea and the bottoms of the clouds.  What I was seeing couldn't be explained with the flat earth paradigm, but only with a globe earth one.   

What I saw was just a kind of a reversal of the 'sunken ship' effect that is so often 'debunked' on this site and I didn't really expect too many to believe me anyway.
You might have tried to explain why perspective couldn't explain it but you didn't succeed.  When you make this kind of "slam-dunk FE debunked!" claim you should probably put more effort into explaining and illustrating the phenomena.

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #62 on: December 12, 2018, 06:46:58 PM »
I'm just gonna bring this image back again from the last time we discussed this, as it seems pertinent once again.

(As an aside, if there's some BBC or something I can do to make it resizable in line, showing it so I can put it together for the image would be appreciated as I understand it's rather large)


I see a couple of things here. 1) The clouds in this image are clearly not getting ANY light hitting them from above. 2) The sun has moved to be (at least visually) below the 'horizon' of the clouds, but still casting light up into them from below. We once again have the Everest occurrence.



We have 3 parallel lines here. Now, I haven't added 'perspective effects' to them, I was hoping Tom might oblige doing that for me as this is something that still doesn't make any sense to me. Our black arrow is our plane and it's black plane above the orange clouds. The blue line is the ocean below the clouds. In the upper right we have the actual position of the sun. The lower right is our reddish/orange sun shining light up into the clouds, seemingly from below their plane. How? What happens to allow the sun to appear, not just below our personal sight plane/horizon, but that of something below *us* as well? If nothing else this sure seems to debunk the idea that the 'horizon rises to eye level' imo, but I don't understand how this can possibly occur on a FE.

I mentioned in my earlier posts that I have witnessed this exact effect minus the lava effect. Awesome pic.
I, on rare occasion, see a double layer cloud system where one layer is higher than the mountains and the other below the elevation where I start my descent.
Also well before sun set so there is no perspective of shrinking effect.
Very simply, I see the sun between the two layers of clouds lighting up the bottom of the top layer and the top of the bottom layer.
The sun drops below the top layer before I descend down through them.
The descent is rapid from near (4,000 feet to 125 elevation) in 7 miles.
When I get below the clouds I pick up sight of the sun again and it's illuminating the bottoms of those clouds.
Here's the kicker.
there's another ridge to the east of the (125 foot above sea level) valley that is much lower in elevation,(maybe 1,500 feet), than the mountains to the west where I just came from. As I descend bellow the elevation of the ride to the east I can no longer see the sun but still see the bottom of the clouds lite up.
I also watch the shadow from the ridge to the east climb up the mountain to the west as the sun sets.
(The distance between the ridge to the east and mountain to to the west is about 10 miles.) Absolutely NO perspective of shrinking effect tacking place during my observations.

Elevarions
Peak to the west 4,000 feet
------------ east  1,500 ----
Distance between 10 miles
Valley between peaks 125 feet
Cloud layers estimate altitude
top layer between 6,000 & 10,000
Bottom layer 3,000 to 3,500

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #63 on: December 12, 2018, 07:06:08 PM »
I can't ever post a photo on this site because I have no 'generally acceptable' authentication standards that would show that the photo wasn't altered.  Anything that I could show otherwise would just 'with a wave of the hand' be claimed to have been photo shopped.

Imagine yourself in the middle of the ocean on a globe earth.  There's a known frontal system ahead of you with the sun at your back.  You clearly see just the tops of Cumulonimbus clouds lit up by the sun appearing ahead on the horizon.  Slowly the clouds build higher & higher until you just start to see the tiniest of a gap between the bottoms of the clouds and the sea ahead. Then the ship progresses under the clouds and into a cloudy evening ahead. 

I've also seen a variation of that very same thing with Mt Fuji slowly rising from the sea, also with clouds around it as we approached Japan.  In this case the mountain was at a known distance because our position was known.  Perspective is no argument here because that argument presumes that you will see a wider object before you see a narrower one.  Since I could only see the tip of Mt Fuji first and not the wider part below at the same time, it proves that the wider part was invisible because it was hidden by the curvature of the earth.  If you did a little charting the view was pretty much what you would expect on a globe earth.  That's very hard to refute with the perspective argument.

You couldn't see any land around the mountain until we got a whole lot closer and finally approached & entered the port to discharge our cargo.


« Last Edit: December 12, 2018, 07:19:36 PM by RonJ »
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

Curiosity File

Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #64 on: December 12, 2018, 07:11:21 PM »
Your picture appears to show land ahead not just clouds.  The sun directly ahead makes it difficult to discern exactly.  What I've seen was in the afternoon with the sun behind and clearly lighting the tops of the clouds.  Even with a telescope you could see clouds all the way to the sea until we got closer.
Using a telescope is cheating. It blows the "perception effect" out of the water, pun intended.
Out of curiosity could you give an estimate of distance it takes for the clouds to meat the ocean?
If someone did the math I'm positive it would show that the distance it would take the clouds to meat the ocean on a FE by perspective would be much greater than that of what we observe in the real world. 

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #65 on: December 12, 2018, 07:27:56 PM »
It's hard to say the distance exactly to a bank of clouds that's part of a moving weather front, but I would say about 50 nautical miles.  Typically we would be doing about 24 knots and would take about 2 hours to start going under any clouds.  Since this thread is about clouds at sunrise I hate to say anything about mountains or buildings at a known distances that were seen on a regular basis.  I've done that in past posts that confirms a globe earth.

I'm an engineer by training and experience. Showing something using math wouldn't be a problem.  It's difficult to prove much of anything by just observing clouds.  Just about any observation could easily have an explanation for either FE or RE.  Any picture that seemed to show a really definitive answer would just be called a 'fake'.  I'm still a licensed commercial pilot and have been flying above a bank of clouds and have seen the sun set and go below those clouds.  Again the argument would be perspective.  There are ways around the argument but would be a logistical problem.  Any pictures taken of cloud tops from two different points would just be deemed photo shopped as there's zero authentication standards on this website.   
« Last Edit: December 12, 2018, 09:39:39 PM by RonJ »
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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #66 on: December 12, 2018, 09:37:25 PM »
You might have tried to explain why perspective couldn't explain it but you didn't succeed. 

May I try?

1. Let this represent a cloud bank. The upper half (red with yellow squares) is cloud. The lower half (yellow with red squares) is the "gap" below the clouds. The gap is 500' from surface to ceiling. The clouds are an additional 500' above the gap. Together, they are 1000'.


2. Here is a view of that cloud+gap from a height of 100 feet (bridge of a ship) at a distance of 100 miles through a 50mm focal length lens. On the left is a flat earth view. On the right is a globe earth view. On a flat earth, we can't resolve the cloud from the gap but we can see something. On a globe earth, we see nothing yet. But this isn't about whether or not something can be seen. This is about perspective. As far as perspective is concerned, 500 feet of cloud (or 500 feet of clearance below the cloud) subtends about 0.054 of a degree or just over 3 arcminutes.  A good eye should be able to resolve an angular gap of 3 arcminutes below the cloud but this display/model isn't able to.  Still, lets pretend that we're approximating the limits of eye resolution since that is a companion piece of the perspective argument for a flat earth:


3. Let's try to overcome the resolution limits of the shorter focal length by zooming in. This is a common flat earth argument for showing how "zooming" in can restore something to view. At 200mm "zoom" in the flat scenario we can now barely make out the lower 500' yellow segment representing the gap. Did zooming make the cloud bank appear to "rise up?" Or did it just help resolve the upper 500' from the lower 500'?

Zooming didn't work on the globe side. The entire 1000' of cloud+gap is still not visible. On the flat side, zooming didn't increase resolution of the upper 3 arcminutes of clouds more than the lower 3 arcminutes of gap. Both are still 3 arcminutes. Zooming just helped us to begin to distinguish the two from each other. In other words, the clouds didn't come into view before the gap did. They diverged from the same 6 minutes of arc into two 3 minutes of arc of distinguishable characteristics.  Zooming didn't change perspective. Perspective remained the same.


4. Let's leave the focal length alone now and begin reducing distance. Here is the 200mm view from 75 miles (always keeping our observation height at 100 feet). The globe view still can't see the clouds, but now the flat earth can clearly distinguish cloud from gap. Both are 500' in height and they have increased in vertical angular height at the same rate. At 75 miles, 500' now subtends 4 minutes of arc. That's perspective at work. The spatial dimension of angular height is inversely proportional to the distance. As distance decreases the apparent height (angular height) increases. But perspective isn't making the clouds "grow" more rapidly than the gap. 500' of gap isn't resolving more slowly than 500' of cloud. Perspective is operating on both at the same rate.


5. At 50 miles, the clouds have finally come into view on a globe earth. Are we seeing only the tops of the clouds or, like previously in the flat earth scenario, is the 500' of clouds merely unresolved from the lower 500' of gap? It must be the former, right? Because we're zoomed in to 200mm, so 500' should subtend the same degree of arc as in the clearly resolved flat earth scenario. At 50 miles, 500' now accounts for 6.4 arcminutes. That's true whether we're on a flat earth or a globe. It's a function of distance, not surface topology. So on a globe, we MUST only be seeing the top of the 500' clouds. The lower 500' gap is still hidden from view.

But this didn't happen as the cloud + gap came into view on a flat earth. Perspective increased the size of the clouds and the gap at the same time. Zoom helped us resolve the difference earlier than in the globe scenario, but it didn't bring the clouds into view before the gap. Neither did perspective. Already, we can see something different is happening on a globe than on a flat earth in the way this cloud bank is coming into view.


6. This is a 40 mile view. On the flat earth, the cloud bank and the gap beneath it both just keeps getting bigger. That's how perspective works. The angle subtended by a 500' vertical height is now over 8 arcminutes. But even so, on a globe at that distance, though the full 500' (8+ arcminutes of cloud) is visible, only a tiny sliver of the gap below the clouds is seen. Maybe about 20% (100 of the 500 feet of gap). If perspective was responsible for this disparate revelation of gap compared to cloud, then we should have seen the clouds resolve earlier than the gap in the flat earth scenario. But they didn't. They resolved together, equally, as you would expect with perspective. But something else other than perspective (or resolution) must be responsible for the differences in revealing of the gap below the clouds.


7. At 30 miles, we clearly see that there is a gap under the clouds, but it's still narrower than the band of clouds above. But we know that we set the model up so that they were the same vertical height of 500', which at this distance makes up almost 11 arcminutes. We see the full 11 arcminutes of cloud in both the globe and flat scenario. But we only see about 7.5 arcminutes of gap in the globe scenario. That's 3.5 minutes of arc difference between the cloud band and the gap band. (Gap Band.  Ha!)

That delta never happens in the flat scenario. Perspective doesn't cause that. The remaining increase in angular visibility is what is causing the upper cloud segment to appear to rise; something with doesn't happen in a flat scenario and for which Perspective is not responsible.


8. Finally, we'll jump ahead and stop at a distance of about 14 miles. At this range, 500' takes up over 23 arcminutes and the full span of the gap below the clouds is fully visible on a globe.  Perspective can now 'expand' the gap area inversely to the distance just as it's been doing on the flat earth side since the start.

What what Perspective is incapable of doing is making the gap come into view and increase in size more slowly or after the upper clouds.



Note, too, that a distinguishing feature between flat and convex surface models is the "dip" in the objective from eye level.

In Rowbotham's Earth Not a Globe, he adds an extra feature to "help" perspective explain this phenomenon. He says surface irregularities, such as waves, at the horizon account for the difference between how higher and lower objects are revealed. The model above didn't account for surface irregularities. The surface was smooth.

But you can't have your perspective cake and forget about it too. Perspective works on the waves as well, causing them to diminish in angular height with distance. To account for the disparity between revealing of upper clouds and lower gap, they'd have to be closer to the observer by inverse relationship to the size required to account for the amount of obscuring they would cause. Not only that, but they'd have to be ever-present, yet the "sinking ship" phenomenon happens regardless of sea state or surface smoothness.

Another oft-claimed addition to the flat earth scenario is the atmo(layer) effects at low grazing angles. The atmo- is dense, and looking horizontally across a distance near-parallel to the surface is to look through ever denser amounts of particulates, moisture and other obscuring, light-extinction factors. We encounter haze, mirage, shimmering, diffusion...aspects which make distinguishing things more difficult. This is most pronounced close to the surface (usually). So "convergence zone" -- that band of air closest to the surface of earth -- becomes another possible explanation for why lower elements of an object or lower objects are lost to sight before higher ones. And that is true...sometimes. Not always. Like waves, atmospheric/atmolayer surface conditions can mask things from sight that just getting a little steeper angle or elevation can restore to sight.

But if that's a required component, then it needs to be consistent. The atmo- is anything but consistent. It's in constant flux. Yet even under perfectly clear and stable air conditions, the above phenomenon is observed. 

So that's why citing perspective as the reason for "sinking ship effect" is grossly flawed. Perspective doesn't work in that way. And trying to apply ad hoc rationalizations (waves, eye resolution, convergence zone) to salvage it only reveals its flaws.

But a curving surface does work as an explanation. (So does light curving in the opposite direction away from a flat earth surface, which is why I remained intrigued by Electromagnetic Accelerator in a flat earth model while disparaging Perspective as an explanation for the "sinking ship" phenomenon.)

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Illumination of clouds' undersides at sunrise
« Reply #67 on: December 12, 2018, 09:58:15 PM »
Thank you, Bobby, for your excellent explanation for what it's like to see a bank of clouds appear on the horizon at sea. 

Of course the other thing that debunks perspective would be observing a mountain rising out of the sea.  A mountain gets wider as you go below the peak.  Therefore with perspective you could expect to see the wider, lower, portions first before seeing the peak.  The lower portions are even a bit closer as well.  Now imagine Mt. Fuji in Japan appearing out of the sea as we start nearing our port.  First you see the peak, then you start to see the clouds that often are around the mountain, then you slowly start to see the rest of the mountain rise out of the sea.  It's a very impressive sight.  You can be sure that a bunch of us were taking a good look at Mt. Fuji thru our telescope as well.  It meant shore time was getting close.   
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!