Where was my Moon?

A few months ago I took a random picture of the Moon using my Theodolite app (on iPhone 7 Plus), which records the date, time, azimuth/horizontal angle, and altitude/elevation angle, and thought I would check it against a couple of sources:

Mooncalc.org data for this date, time, and location

Yup, it's where it should be -- I'm pointed low and to the right a bit.

Stellarium

Moon - Az/Alt: +275°09'58.1"/+29°52'47.0" (apparent)

The Altitude is within a fraction of a degree, the Azimuth of my device isn't terribly accurate (it wiggles around actively) because it's based partially on the magnetic reading -- so it's off by maybe 3-4 degrees.

To get an accurate heading we need to align to the stars and that's just not built-into phones yet.  I'll be able to do it with my telescope pretty soon but I won't always have that with me -- but that should give me similar accuracy with heading measurements (if not better -- possibly down to a few arcseconds - but it depends upon the care with which I calibrate and align my telescope).

Quick Thoughts: Telescopes and the Flat Earth

I don't even know what to do with this information other than share it...

Yeah...I heard of your preprogrammed lol telescopes. They make stars look just like the CGI you've seen on TV!
Bill Nye certified! pic.twitter.com/oIaPxLuMuo

— Gospel Truth (@BadBuc99) June 27, 2017

Does this guy REALLY not understand that it's just a database of where to point in the sky?  There is no projector or imager in the telescopes.

You get worse images from these smaller scopes than you get from mine, which is fully manual and you can look inside the tube and even disassemble the tube completely and verify there are just 2 mirrors in there -- the larger one is on the back and the smaller one angles the light up into the eyepiece, which is at the front where the light comes in.

Meade LX70 R6

But, of course, the illuminaughty are all powerful and can apparently embed billions of images into the very mirror itself along with sensors so it knows exactly where it is and which way it's pointing -- I'm assuming this is all alien technology that nobody else seems to have...

It's the parabolic lens that gives a false image. Who knows what the preprogrammed stuff really is. I'd bet they have Pre-enhancements in it

— Gospel Truth (@BadBuc99) June 27, 2017

And yet, when I point it at terrestrial objects I see them perfectly clearly (albeit inverted).

He was unable to say specifically what was 'false' about it, but you know, he just KNOWS it is false, cuz magic.

Do they have any ACTUAL evidence this is taking place?  No


Archived Images:

Quick Debunk: Stars would run out of Oxygen

Wow, I don't even know where to start on this one?

However, if you are a Christian Flat Earther and you believe that Bearing False Witness is a sin then you might want to try to at LEAST understand the actual model before you bear false witness against it.

You can think the model is WRONG but you can't just lie about it.

The sun is a fire ball of burning of gas. Fire needs oxygen to burn. Space is devoid of oxygen. How does the sun continue to burn? 🤔🌞

— Good Bonds (@goodbonds1) June 19, 2017

And backup image:

Ok -- the MODEL is that the Sun is a giant ball of mostly HYDROGEN gas 1.989 × 10³⁰ kg

This amount of mass, thanks to Gravity (and yes, I know Flat Earthers deny gravity but that IS THE MODEL -- and they have yet to actually disprove anything -- and Einstein already 'disproved gravity' because under Relativity it's a fictitious force), creates tremendous pressure which causes some of the Hydrogen to fuse into Helium which releases a tremendous amount of energy as Helium has slightly less mass (and E=mc²) -- and eventually heavier elements are also created (and most of the elements heavier than Iron come from Supernova and Neutron star collisions).

There is NO OXYGEN involved -- Oxygen is PRODUCED by this nuclear synthesis in fact.

I suggest you research nucleosynthesis beyond this because it also matches up the amount of each element we observe in the universe pretty well with Nuclear theory.  And when we've believed we found a disagreement, so far, it's always been found that we had made an error (like excluding Neutron Star collisions was a big one).

There are many ways that we know the mass and composition of the Sun.

First we observed how angles work and how a more distant object appears to move less in your angular vision than a closer object.  From this we worked out how to use this Parallax effect to find the distances to things.  From this you can find the approximate distance to the Moon (and now we can bounce lasers and radar off the moon and use signal propagation times to directly measure the speed and distance to the Moon).  Using the Moon you can get a good estimate of the distance to Venus.  And then they used a Solar Transit of Venus to find the parallax of the Sun and get a good estimate of that distance.

If the Sun and Moon were only 3000 miles away and the ground was flat you could TRIVIALLY take any two people 100 miles apart and measure the angles to the Moon and Sun and find the distance.  That doesn't work because the Sun is EXTREMELY distant which means the observed Parallax is TOO SMALL TO USEFULLY MEASURE (at least without heroic efforts).

Once you work out the orbits for all these objects you can use this information to deduce their Mass as well.

I'm not going to do all that here -- it is extremely well published and covered in every elementary book on the subject.

The point here is that Flat Earthers continue to lie about everything while whining that other people who aren't lying are lying to them (because they lack the education to understand or analyze the subject matter properly).

Earth's Rotation

Flat Earthers lie about the Michelson–Morley experiment and claim it shows stationary Earth but that is simply not what it was built to test.  You want the Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment (1925), The Effect of the Earth's Rotation On The Velocity Of Light which very definitely was built for this purpose and gave a positive result.

A giant, modern version is just becoming operational and will measure changes in Earth rotation from earthquakes, weather, tsunamis, etc: Rotational Motions in Seismology (ROMY)

I've also previously posted about the Compton experiment measured the rotation of the Earth using a tube of water with small particulates (How Compton computed Latitude, direction to North, and length of a day).

Gyrocompasses find geocentric North using the spin of the Earth, here is one in operation:



Every major ship in every Navy was fitted with Gyrocompasses around the time of World War II because they are far superior to a magnetic compass -- most big ships today still have modern versions and more are moving to MEMS/FOGS/Ring Laser gryocompasses (MK39 4A Ring Laser).


Here is how Gyrocompasses are designed (notice how they are NOT simply toy gyros):




SAGNAC ring detecting Earth spin (and many scientific studies)




PS Move detecting Earth spin




Wolfie6020 tests Earth spin with a mass at different latitudes



And there are THOUSANDS of other scientific papers and experiments on Earth's Spin.

It's fine if you don't want to trust existing science -- in fact, it's NOT science if the methods aren't published for replication -- but it's also NOT FINE to lie about things you don't understand and haven't personally tested -- or when shown that your test methodology is flawed to fail to correct it (as is the case with Flat Earthers pretending to test gyroscopes but failing to even ATTEMPT to calculate how much resistence their gyroscope-system has and compare it against the expected forces acting on the gyroscope from Earth's rotation.

They don't show these things because they don't understand them so they put out false videos and credulous Flat Earthers then parrot them like Gospels.

Quick Debunk: Russianvids - Nikon P900 Digital Camera Sun Zoomed At Sea At Sunset Proves Flat Earth

I can smell Flat Earth BS from further away than a Nikon P900 can zoom into.

Russianvid? I guess the Russians are trying to undermine world Education by pushing Flat Earth.

Anyway,  Another low quality (stolen?) video proof of 'Flat Earth' cuz zoom right?

In reality, just another example of Flat Earthers not understanding how exposure works.

We've covered this many times but I put together a quick refresher:

So what do we see this video?

Um -- why doesn't it get bigger if we zoomed into ii

We know that zoom doesn't bring back things that are actually over the horizon:

If you want to impress me with your Sunset video make sure I can see some details in the Sun -- ONLY THEN are you getting an accurate measurement of WHERE the sun actually is and what size it is.

To do that you'll need to add a good filter or welding class in front of your lens and THEN you'll see a sun that looks more like this:

And if you REALLY want to get better data, use an actual quality telescope:

Soundly Shows Flat Earthers The Curve

In a rather devastating series of videos and high-resolution photographs Soundly has shown the best evidence for the curvature over the horizon I've seen [Soundly's Google Drive] - thanks to a very long line of equal height towers that stretch over a portion of Lake Pontchartrain.  His first Video includes extended details about exactly where the images were taken.

Observation Height: about 40' above water on the bridge
North Side: Approximate Location: 30° 4'42.40"N, 90°24'20.98"W
South Side: Approximate Location: 30° 4'38.71"N, 90°24'12.66"W
Tall Background Tower (210' - ORS# 22-001038): 30°17'37.59"N, 90°18'38.64"W

IMG_4118 is my personal favorite of the images, which I color balanced and notated - including the perspective lines for the towers.

Where those lines converge is where the horizon would be IF Earth was flat.  That is how the "Vanishing Point" for parallel lines works.  The fact that the horizon is BELOW that point and the fact that the towers clearly fall below these lines shows you the water surface is curved.

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4118

He has many other images as well -- from the other side of the towers and at night also.  My versions are LOWER resolution than the originals -- click on the Image Credit link to get the full resolution image.

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4034

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4037

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4040

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4043

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_4049

Image Credit: Soundly IMG_5038

I've said it before and I'll say it again - AGREEMENT WITH MODEL IS NOT PROOF.  This is very good evidence but it COULD BE wrong for some reason.  That's completely fair.

Calling these images "fakes" or dismissing them out of hand however is not genuine scientific inquiry.  Soundly has video, numerous images, and a LIVE STREAM of this area.

There are some videos that fail to show this curve but they are low resolution and blurry and do not refute the authenticity of these images.  I addressed one of them here on my blog.

Curved Tower Line?

So "Zach" made a video which alleged that this "apparent" curvature was due to the towers not being in a straight-line -- of course he very pointedly analyzed the WRONG line of towers which renders his analysis completely moot but I wanted to address this idea that the towers being out of line could cause this view.

So I made a SketchUp model [ Download Sketchup Model ] where I curved the line of towers

The first ~100 towers are in a straight-line, and the rest bow out according to a slight curvature - which is very clear from this angle.

Now let's look down both sides of the towers, first from the side where the towers curve out.  No matter where you cut this we do not see the characteristic downward curve we see in Soundly's images.

And from the other side the towers are so dense you cannot see past them so you just see a truncated line of towers.

Since Soundly has images from BOTH SIDES showing the same downward curve this is very good evidence that it's an actual downward curve and NOT an artifact of the towers being out of line.

Refraction

Perhaps refraction could be responsible for this effect?

Well, ok -- but normally refraction RAISES more distant objects up and allows us to see very slightly over the horizon that would exist if there was no atmosphere -- this is because light tends to bend towards the more dense air at lower altitudes.  It is POSSIBLE for refraction to reverse direction but since we see evidence of inferior mirages forming right above the horizon in Soundly's image.

For now, these stand as excellent examples of Earth's Curvature.

Flat Earth Dishonesty: IF ONLY WE HAD A PICTURE FROM SPACE

I suppose this strategy is successful enough with people who don't really know much about just how much data we get from satellites but let's jump down the rabbit hole...

Gosh, if only...  And what does he mean "composite" exactly since EVERY COLOR IMAGE IS A COMPOSITE?  I'll assume he means it's not strips of data so I've given numerous examples here of images that are FULL FRAME images of the Earth. They are ALL composites because all digital images are grayscale and color is applied to at least 3 layers of data to give a color image.  That is how your P900 works also.  It has Red/Green/Blue filters in a matrix that filter out that color of light and render a grayscale data on the sensor, which is then COMPOSITED to form the final color image.

Because we don't have about a MILLION 11000 x 11000 pixel images from Himawari-8, the Japanese weather satellite and Himawari-9 coming online now (click for full resolution image, prepare for a big download):

Himiwari-9

The idea that all this data is faked and yet matches actual weather patterns is just ridiculous.

Then we have DSCOVR/EPIC (primary mission is solar observations) which has a unique perspective on the Earth being the furthest Earth imaging satellite we have -- it hovers around the Lagrange point 1, which is a stable orbital area located about  930,000 miles from Earth.  Most "full frame" weather satellites are geosynchronous which is "only" about 22,240 miles away (so EPIC is almost 42 times further away).

 At this point the satellite isn't orbiting the Earth but is co-orbiting the Sun along with the Earth so it always faces the sunny side of the Earth -- but since it isn't perfectly centered you can usually see a slight shadow on one edge (which shifts over time).

The Lagrange Points, DSCOVR/EPIC is at L1

EPIC is a little bit older technology now so the CCD is only 2048x2048.

DSCOVR/EPIC

But it takes an image ever hour (in 10 spectra) and you can watch a full year timelapse:

Another new satellite coming online now is GOES-16 which isn't operational yet but is already providing unprecedented views of the Earth.

GOES-16 Comes Online

If you add all the weather satellite data from the past 20 years we have BILLIONS of images and hundreds of thousands of hours of video.

The idea that all of these are simple photoshop images or even the idea that there are millions of planes and balloons scouring the Earth every minute of the day and night so we get accurate image data we can render into globes is just absurd.

What Flat Earth is doing here to taking the fact that NASA themselves explained how they made SOME of the Blue Marble images FROM low-earth-orbit data (~500 miles up) and claiming that shows some grand conspiracy.

If NASA is "lying" why did THEY publish the details of how the images were put together?

NASA: VIIRS Eastern Hemisphere Image - Behind the Scenes

People often balk at this image but this is simply HOW the Earth looks from just 500 miles up, you only see a FRACTION of the Globe - you can recreate this in Google Earth.  THIS IS HOW SPHERES WORK.

From the ISS, 250 miles up, this is all you can see of the Globe because you cannot see past where your line-of-sight is tangent to the surface:

As for his second claim that we see "Top to Bottom" of distant mountains -- that is also just a flat out lie and I've posted a dozen or more of these examples along with my full analysis on my blog:

Quick Debunk: Manny's Magic 12,000 mile Solstice Image

Our spammy twitter friend Manny (now Brian because we assume he got banned for spamming?) loves to make bizarre claims about this image:

This is the illusion. In this image, the sun has provided noon to 12 time zones. Then it's going to provide noon to 12 more WITHOUT pic.twitter.com/tkCnrAZ0cm

— Brian (@hplarc12345) June 11, 2017

Here is the image:

Image Credit: Danilo Pivato © Copyright: - Images 2006

This was also APOD 2007 December 22, where we learn some details about the image:

• This series is from the 2005 Solstice
• It is looking down the Tyrrhenian Sea coast from Santa Severa toward Fiumicino, Italy
• The view covers about 115 degrees in 43 exposures

The sunrise & sunset times for Santa Severa in Dec 2005 were:

Sunrise: 7:37 am (121°)
Sunset: 4:44 pm (239°)

Which are 118° apart.

And this is only 9 hours 06 minutes 47 seconds.

So this is NOT "12 timezones" as Manny claims, it's only about 9.

So it seems that Manny cannot actually look at photographs and magically tell ANYTHING from them as he claims.  He is almost always wrong about details.

This is, in fact, EXACTLY what we would expect to see on 22 Dec 2005 from this location on Earth if the Earth is a Globe and NOTHING like what any Flat Earth model would predict.

Here is a Celestia simulation of this view, Celestia is Open Source so I challenge any Flat Earthers to find the "Flat Math" in the source code and expose the conspiracy.

He THINKS this shows the sun going in a big circle overhead but he's just Flat Out Wrong.

The Celestia calculations are a good match with observed reality.  I took 10 screenshots from 06:44 and hourly after that and overlaid them, clipping out the sun from each shot and overlaid the APOD image over that.  That is the predictive power of the Heliocentric/Globe model - it matches observed reality with the FEWEST assumptions.

The Heliocentric/Globe model is built on top of the observed reality that Mass mutually attracts.  Scientists have moved a very large mass around a Cesium fountain and OBSERVED the microscopically fine details in the paths the Cesium atoms take to confirm that it's the external large Mass that accounts for the changes in observations.  Move it above the atomic fountain and the atoms fall more slowly, move it to every side and the atoms move slightly to that side.  This is not a "Theory", this is directly observed and confirmed observations.  The THEORY of gravity is that it's the shape of space that best explains these observations.  The OBSERVATIONS themselves are Fact.  Could Einstein be wrong and it's NOT the local shape of spacetime?  ABSOLUTELY!  But that doesn't change the OBSERVATIONS that mass mutually attracts.

And BTW, according to Einstein gravity is NOT a force, at least not what is called a Proper Force.  This is drawn from the Gedankenexperiment that in an enclosed shell with no access to the outside world an observer inside feels no force and can measure no acceleration but from outside we clearly see the shell hurtling towards the ground and accelerating rapidly (9.8 m/s/s).  This is now easily confirmed by almost anyone with a modern cell phone with an accelerometer.

This is an image of the Accelerometer readings on my iPhone while I dropped it onto pillows.

It falls about 0.7 seconds from approximately 2.4 meters (8 feet).  Just a quick double check on the math -- height fallen equals one half the gravitational (Earth) constant (9.8m/s/s) times the time squared (gt²/2):

h = gt²/2 = 9.8*0.7²/2 = 9.8*0.49/2 = 4.8/2 = 2.4m ~ 8"

This confirms that the acceleration we observe ('g') is about 9.8 m/s/s.  At least for me, you'll have to repeat the experiment on your own to confirm it.  EVEN IF I offered you a video you still need not trust that I'm about 6 foot tall and was holding the phone to the ceiling which makes it about 8 feet.  No amount of evidence from me is better than you simply repeating this trivial experiment.  Keep in mind your margin for error on your measurements -- I'm pushing it using even a single decimal point here -- if you want accuracy you'll need a consistent and timed release mechanism and some way to more exactly time the fall, higher resolution sensors, and about 1000 repeats looking for ways you unknowingly introduced some error.

But more important for our purposes here is that our accelerometers drop to ZERO during the freefall (until we start seeing a small amount of air resistance showing up -- sorry, I don't have an 8 foot tall vacuum chamber but that experiment has been done) and the following ballistic arc after the bounce.

NOTHING ELSE works this way -- this is one reason that Gravity isn't merely some form of normal acceleration and it confirms our earlier thought experiment -- we cannot locally measure the acceleration of Gravity.  But we soon see the impact of the pillow which starts resisting and then rapidly applying a resistive acceleration to our phone far exceeding "1 Gforce".

This ONE thing -- mass mutually attracts -- then explains SO MUCH of what we observe and gives us phenomenal predictive power that results in incredibly useful tools like Celestia.

What force holds the Sun and Moon above the Earth and moves them in Circles and how was that force confirmed?  Flat Earthers have no answers here -- they just make things up and ignore the glaring gaps in their wild guess (it's not even a testable theory).


For safekeeping:

Where is GOES-16? [Celestia Recreation]

NOAA posted the following image from the "new" GOES-16 satellite. (more)

Image Credit: NOAA/NASA

Let's use this to validate the reported position of GOES-16 itself using Celestia.

Orbit should be between 35,788.1 and 35,798.7 km (35793.4 avg) above 0.0002°N 89.4589°W and this image was from Jan. 15, 2017.

I got approximately 20:37Z

I have positional data for June but this was taken in January so we've probably drifted a bit East.

Celestia CEL Link

Where is the curve?

A collection curvature images.

There are three "kinds" of curvature we can readily observe to know the Earth is a very large spheroid.

First of all you need to understand that your horizon is NOT the same as looking at "the whole Earth", you can see only a very tiny portion of the Earth until you get a very great distance away (several Earth Radii).  Your view is limited to where your line of sight hits the Earth.  The closer you get the less you can see of the whole.  I tried to demonstrate this effect of perspective here:

For example from 35,000 feet your view is still microscopic.

Even at 400km where the International Space Station is you still have a very limited view.  This is why Flat Earthers say the whole Earth won't fit in that view -- IT WON'T AND SHOULDN'T.

So...

Curvature #1 is to observe that your horizon is (roughly) equally distant in all directions -- if it CURVES around you it simply CANNOT also be flat in every direction you look.  That is just completely absurd.  Even on a Flat Earth your horizon would be limited by the atmosphere and would STILL BE A CIRCLE.  It only LOOKS "flat" because you are viewing that very large circle almost completely on edge.  How "round" does a penny look when view on edge?

Furthermore, it is trivial to observe that as you gain elevation the distance to your horizon grows.  You see much further up on a mountain than you do down on the ground, even over water.  So Flat Earth needs to explain why, when we look through MORE atmosphere we see further and why a 3 mile horizon is very very sharp and a 50 mile distant horizon is extremely fuzzy -- if it's the atmosphere blocking your view it should be fuzzy at 3 miles also.  And why can we see the much more distant stars right down to the horizon but can't see a 1000 foot tall building that is between them?


Curvature #2 is the horizon apparent Sagitta curvature.  This is the apparent 'hump' of the horizon due to viewing a circle at a very oblique angle.  This is probably what most people think of when they think of seeing the "curvature of Earth" -- but you CANNOT, you ALWAYS see a horizon.  At several radii away from a spheroid you start to see close enough to half that it looks like you are seeing a normal "ball".  For the Earth that would be several thousands of miles away, that's why only very distant satellites can take an image of the Earth and it looks like a globe (see Himawari-8, DSCOVR/EPIC, and GOES-16 imagery).

To see this kind of curvature with your naked-eye you need to be fairly high up and have a wide field of view and a very clear day.  The higher the resolution and the wider the field of view and the more careful you are about your observation the lower you can detect or measure this kind of curvature.  If you had a very clear day over very calm oceans and you put a very wide straight edge along the horizon you could measure a few pixels as low as a few hundreds of feat.


Curvature #3 is to measure the curvature going away from us by observing that objects appear to shrink exponentially faster the further away they are.  The further you can see the more obvious the effect - distant mountains expose this extremely clearly.

There are other ways to measure the curvature but I don't know of any reasonable way to make such observations to test anything because the effects are too small.

Unreasonable Curvature #4 TILT -- Every 69.1 miles objects would be leaning out from you by about *ONE* degree.

But do you have ANY idea how little 1° lean is and it's leaning away from you but at the same time it's now 3000 feet BELOW you, that means your perspective shifts to a very elevated position and you have a perspective shift because of the distance and perspective makes things 69.1 miles away EXTREMELY small.  I'm open to ideas but I have no way to test it or try to observe it directly.

This shows a 1° lean - which one is leaning back 1°?s

So let's look at some curvature!

Concorde taken by Adrian Meredith in an RAF Tornado over the Irish Sea - April 1985.  Not a "fisheye" lens or the airplane would be distorted/bent also.  This is horizon sagitta curvature.

A Flat Earth favorite, they often send it to me!  Again, shows horizon sagitta curvature.

here is a neat trick - resize the image horizontally to help the curvature stand out:

But watch out, you'll often find Flat Earthers cheating!

This original of the Pontchartrain Causeway shows a clear curve:

But that's really too much curve for that altitude, possibly a small amount of distortion:

But that doesn't stop Flat Earthers from editing the original photo and trying to use it:

This an image of the clearly sunken CN Tower over the Lake.  Taking into account the observer elevation and maybe a touch of refraction this is a perfect example of curvature over the horizon.

another image of distant Toronto and the CN Tower.

And one final CN Tower image which really shows the rotation of the CN Tower SKYPOD view due to us being significantly higher up.

 This series is from one of the earliest high altitude images ever taken - on a V2 rocket from 1948.  The individual frames are very narrow field of view and so they LOOK flat, but measure slightly curved and when you put them all side-by-side the curvature is fairly obvious.

This is a professional surveyor marking out LEVEL using a theodolite from Apple Pie Hill.  We can see that the ground falls clearly below the level mark.  Accuracy here is a few arc seconds.

This series is the Incredible Shrinking Mountain Rainer taken from two positions, one near Seattle and the further from Canada where we can only just see the very tip of Rainer.

Here we observe the horizon dropping well below eye-level using the Theodolite app on the iPhone.  Accuracy here is roughly 2/10ths of a degree.  We see the angle to horizon varies with altitude and the last image is meant to show that it finds LEVEL regardless of the orientation of the phone.

This one is Rainer but taken from Brunswick Mountain

This is one of my favorite things Flat Earthers will throw at me.  This is from AirPano

What they ignore is first of all, that is a 360 degree image so the horizon that is a circle has been unrolled.  Here is the very next FRAME which is the 360 degree view looking straight down.  Guess what, your horizon is a giant circle so it curves around you.  Flat Earthers WRONGLY expect to see an "Earth" with the so-called "Limbs Of The Earth" curving down before you.  That's just WRONG - that's not what you SHOULD see on a sphere.

X-15 footage, fortunately I was able to find a good schematic of the plane and get a good estimate for the Field Of View from that:

This was a fun one.  They claimed this was Denali from Hilltop Ski resort /scratched record sound/, nope -- they even had the WRONG mountain.  They NEVER check memes.  I suspect someone faked this meme and Flat Earthers just mindlessly parrot them.

I love using Flat Earth's own memes against them, like this Fort Myers to Naples image -- it's a good image because the beach is running further from us and we can clearly see the beach disappears and the building bottoms start to disappear.  I also get to catch them lying because that's not 42.7 miles they are 11.7 miles away which puts the hidden height RIGHT where we expect on a curved earth.

My best High Altitude Balloon image with a FULL and deep analysis.  Is it fisheye distortion or since the horizon is BELOW lens center is the fisheye actually trying to flatten out our horizon Sagitta?

I think this is fair game because Flat Earthers CONSTANTLY use footage from this same video to try FAKE a flat horizon.  However, they picked a frame where the horizon is well below lens center with the intent to deceive -- I researched which frames would be most accurate and still work against me and picked that one.

And hilariously now I've seen my image used in a counter-counter-meme so I guess they accept that it at least APPEARS curved now?  But remember -- my point is that the horizon is NOT a sphere but rather is a CIRCLE formed where your sightlines hit a tangent on the Sphere.  So yes, a curved table is EXACTLY the model we're looking at (except the edge of our "table" curves away from us in all directions).

Pic (Peak) Canigou from 160-165 miles is pretty amazing -- but the mountain overlay make sit OBVIOUS that we're only just seeing the Peak of this mountain and the rest is hidden by the curvature of the Earth.  We even have a nice little mirage line at one point showing exactly where the horizon line falls.

Lots of ISS images with straight edges so you can see they aren't "fisheye", here are a few:

Here is a more recent example, Soundly found these towers that are actually all very close to the same height and are actually in a very straight line.  Don't be fooled by Zach's video that uses the WRONG towers, these are lined up and Soundly has images from BOTH sides.  Soundly's images are high resolution and reasonably sharp and in focus.

This first image I color balanced ONLY from the RAW file - so it's a little different than other renderings of this frame (IMG_4118.CR2).

And finally, my personal favorite image of the curvature of the Earth (because I own this original print from 1969):

And closer up, cropped, & out of the sleeve

And finally a high-resolution scan of negative AS11-36-5355 -- whereas mine has faded, has spots on the print, isn't color balanced, and was shot with an iPhone under yellow lighting.  So that's why images vary in their final rendering.  There is no "true color", there is "what your eye sees under X, Y, and Z conditions".