Beautiful Photographs that show the Earth's Curvature

Mendel

Senior Member.
AtlasV launch.jpg

Atlas V launch, November 13th 2020, from Cape Canaveral with NROL-101 spy satellite.
The lower part of the launch trail is shaded by the globe, while the upper part is lit by the sun.
 
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I wish somebody with the right equipment would do one like the basketball image above, but of a bowling ball -- to avoid getting into side arguments about whether the bumpiness is concealing a curve that would be visible otherwise. And yes, I understand that the Earth is a bit bumpy in places, but the fewer side-arguments, the better!
 
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(photo by @Amber Robot, originally posted here: "I took this picture with a 300mm zoom lens last week of the Pacific Ocean just after sunset. I can see a sharp edge and even see the *tops* of clouds poking up over the horizon." )
 
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In the spirit of the opening image of this thread...
 

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As far as I know, there is no high hotel on the northern end. I assume you mean the southern end (New Orleans side). Probably the Marriott and looking north?
I'm sorry, you're correct.
The video says it's from Three Lakeway Center which is also known as New Orleans Marriott Metairie at Lakeway (3838 North Causeway Boulevard, Metairie). The building has 34 floors and is 122m high.
 
You can do a video like this with any equatorial mount, which is basically a tripod with a motor-driven mount that spins a telescope (or a camera) at the exact rate the globe turns (~359°/day). You need to adjust its tilt to your location so that the axis of spin is perpendicular to the equator, hence the name.
Eric Brummel has 3 of these on his youtube channel.

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w8OK7M2_hUg

Here's a beautiful visualisation of how it works:

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JmCNNHQ86NE

P.S. the stars look the same (no distortion) from any place on Earth where you can see them. This is not possible with a dome.
 
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P.S. the stars look the same (no distortion) from any place on Earth where you can see them but the stars that you can see differ. This is not possible with a dome.
Augmented such that "a sufficiently large dome" (so with negligible paralax) wouldn't be a counter-example.
 
Augmented such that "a sufficiently large dome" (so with negligible paralax) wouldn't be a counter-example.
I really don't want this to be a discussion thread, so let me just point out the sun and the moon tracks in the "star-stabilized sky" video: they don't have parallax against the "star dome" (except for a tiny bit).
 
Here's a picture showing the apparent absence of curvature on a curved object:
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I wish somebody with such a camera would recreate this with a bowling ball or other smooth ball. The "horizon" of texture bumps (pebbling?) allow somebody so inclined to see visible curvature. I'm curious if that would be true with this sort of camera on a smooth sphere.
 
I wish somebody with such a camera would recreate this with a bowling ball or other smooth ball. The "horizon" of texture bumps (pebbling?) allow somebody so inclined to see visible curvature. I'm curious if that would be true with this sort of camera on a smooth sphere.
You had the exact same idea 22 months ago, in post #9. ;)
 
You had the exact same idea 22 months ago, in post #9. ;)
Well shoot...

It's an old idea. I've posted it many places/times, in hopes that somebody reading it will have the kit to take the shot. I'll try to recall that this is one of the places I've already posted in the future. (Something ambivalent in the syntax there...)

The fact that it was in this very thread IS a bit embarrassing! The only thing I can say in favor of getting old is that, so far, I prefer it to the alternative!

In the meantime, any time somebody posts the basketball, everybody just say to themselves "I bet JMartJr is still pining for that bowling ball shot!" Or just take the shot so I can stop being a nuisance! :D
 
Surely the first shot with the smoke trail being partly in shadow is possible on a flat earth. Its an absolutely beautiful photo btw.
Im not sure what flat earth believers think the earth is? A cube, A disk/square of X km thickness, whatever it is, but nothing stops this from occurring on a flat surface, actually thinking about this now(*) how do flatearthers account for different timezones, how is it dark here now whilst I can ring my family and it being day time (just measured and its 505km away from the antipodes of where I am now)

(*)honestly I've always give flatearth beliefs as much of my limited time as I do photos of UFOs with lights on them, bugger all
 
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Credit: Andrew McCarthy

External Quote:
While this does show our beautiful round shadow, it's actually a bit misleading. Earth's umbra (the darker portion of the shadow) is much smaller than our planet's diameter, so in composites like this it doesn't truly show the scale of our planet. The dark part of the shadow was about 2.7x the width of the moon, while Earth is actually about 4 times the width.

The shadow turns red due to the light scattering through our atmosphere. If you were on the moon, Earth would look like a red ring (with a solar corona around it). When we have permanent lunar residents, we'll be able to get photos of the event from the lunar surface!

To see more of my work or learn about how these types of things are done you can check out my Instagram.

I also wrote a little blog about how I got into this hobby if you're curious what it might take to get started, on my website here.
 
The shadow turns red due to the light scattering through our atmosphere. If you were on the moon, Earth would look like a red ring (with a solar corona around it). When we have permanent lunar residents, we'll be able to get photos of the event from the lunar surface!
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Hey NASA, I know you are reading this thread -- when it comes time to schedule a lunar landing, maybe keep this in mind. Would be really cool.
 
Im not sure what flat earth believers think the earth is? A cube, A disk/square of X km thickness, whatever it is,
Basically a colossal pizza.
but nothing stops this from occurring on a flat surface, actually thinking about this now(*) how do flatearthers account for different timezones, how is it dark here now whilst I can ring my family and it being day time (just measured and its 505km away from the antipodes of where I am now)
The one theory I've often seen going around is that the sun is a massive spot lamp that moves around the flat earth. I don't know the exact details (such as how this explains sunsets) but I know that this is one of the theories.
(*)honestly I've always give flatearth beliefs as much of my limited time as I do photos of UFOs with lights on them, bugger all
I've always tried to but I usually end up inevitably running into it, although amazingly I've never met anyone at any of the Colleges I've attended who believes in the Flat Earth theory. They'll believe a whole bunch of other conspiracy theories but the Flat Earth theory almost never gets mentioned.
 
Same date and location but this one was shot a little bit earlier with a DJI Mini 3 Pro. The lens has a fixed range of 24mm so any curvature caused by the lens would be somewhere between negligible and non-existent. Altitude, going by memory, would've been roughly 380ft (about 115 metres).
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