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View of the ocean with two ships: one in the foreground and one to the left of it on the horizon. Historically, the distance to the visible horizon has long been vital to survival and successful navigation, especially at sea, because it determined an observer's maximum range of vision and thus of communication, with all the obvious consequences for safety and the transmission of information ...
Assuming a perfect sphere with no terrain irregularity, the distance to the horizon from a high altitude transmitter (i.e., line of sight) can readily be calculated. Let R be the radius of the Earth and h be the altitude of a telecommunication station. The line of sight distance d of this station is given by the Pythagorean theorem;
The distance along the great circle will then be s 12 = Rσ 12, where R is the assumed radius of the Earth and σ 12 is expressed in radians. Using the mean Earth radius, R = R 1 ≈ 6,371 km (3,959 mi) yields results for the distance s 12 which are within 1% of the geodesic length for the WGS84 ellipsoid; see Geodesics on an ellipsoid for details.
On one side, there is a view of the horizon; on the other side, a view of the celestial object. The advantage of this type is that both the horizon and celestial object are bright and as clear as possible. This is superior at night and in haze, when the horizon and/or a star being sighted can be difficult to see.
A diagram illustrating great-circle distance (drawn in red) between two points on a sphere, P and Q. Two antipodal points, u and v are also shown. The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance between two points on a sphere, measured along the great-circle arc between them. This arc is the shortest path ...
Refraction by the atmosphere is corrected for with the aid of a table or calculation and the observer's height of eye above sea level results in a "dip" correction (as the observer's eye is raised the horizon dips below the horizontal). If the Sun or Moon was observed, a semidiameter correction is also applied to find the centre of the object.
A cosmological horizon is a measure of the distance from which one could possibly retrieve information. [1] This observable constraint is due to various properties of general relativity, the expanding universe, and the physics of Big Bang cosmology. Cosmological horizons set the size and scale of the observable universe. This article explains a ...
Prevailing visibility in aviation is a measurement of the greatest distance visible throughout at least half of the horizon, not necessarily continuously. To take the prevailing visibility, controllers reference a number of visual reference points: usually buildings , hills , or other geographic features.