Are you fucking kidding me? It wasn't intended to be a "precise" measurement because, quite literally, you can see without it that the moon appears flattened closer to the horizon.
Here is the problem. You made an imprecise measurement, and then drew a conclusion that required precision. You are of course correct in that "you can see without it that the moon appears flattened closer to the horizon", if you look very carefully. No one is arguing this. It's just that your measurement exaggerated the difference in size. (see below)
Are we to assume that the moon is actually flat where it meets the horizon? Is that what you're saying, that it was illogical to project the ellipse to the part obscured by the horizon?
Not at all. It is entirely logical to project an ellipse over the part obscured by the horizon. The problem is that the best fit ellipse is somewhat arbitrary. It is difficult to get a good estimate for the height of the ellipse since the bottom is obscured by the horizon and distorted by refraction.
I decided to make some outlines too! This time I used the high resolution version of the image. (I stupidly used the low resolution version last time.) Hopefully this clears everything up.
Green: Outline done by hand, very slowly, as best as I could. (Bottom left is missing because I can't distinguish the border between the first and second moons.)
Red: Your projected ellipse. (I used the outer edge of your outline.)
Blue: My projected ellipse. (Height is admittedly somewhat arbitrary.)
Yellow: The ellipse outline of the top moon that you compared it with.
Your outline (red) wasn't so bad. Perhaps I was a bit harsh. However, you definitely missed with the width. The actual width of both moons is almost identical. The difficult part comes when estimating the height of the ellipse. I tried several different times (blue), and each time got a slightly different height, despite it looking spot on every time. The problem is that the top part is fairly elliptical, but the bottom part is not, due to being obscured by the horizon and the distortion from refraction. Your outline (red) definitely looks like it is shorter than it should be though.
So, what conclusions can we draw from this?
1. The width stays relatively constant. Your original overlay definitely exaggerated the width difference.
2. The height difference is significant, but the degree is hard to tell. Your original overly
probably exaggerated the height difference.
3. The difference in height of the other moons is small, but measurable. It decreases slightly as it nears the horizon. 6% decrease from moon #7 to #3.
So the only real measurable change in size/shape is a slight decrease in height as it nears the horizon. As has been stated numerous times, this is completely predicted by standard refraction. Score one for round earth.
On the other hand, the flat earth theory predicts a much more noticeable change is size, if the moon is indeed moving away from us: 50% decrease in
both width and height between 6pm and midnight near the equator. This clearly doesn't happen. Flat earth theory is wrong. Sorry.
I am guessing totes has access to a program better than something like MS paint.
Yep! I use
GIMP. It is an excellent free alternative to Photoshop. An edge detection filter is especially helpful for this kind of stuff.
rabinoz: Thanks for providing further evidence that it stays the same size.
CableDawg: That really isn't relevant to this discussion.