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Quote from: Neil Obstat on Yesterday at 10:14:44 PM
This is consistent with what we would expect if the earth is spherical, but this cannot be explained if the earth is flat.
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False. You can clearly see the resolution of the pictures getting worse ... as the markings on the side get more and more blurry. So the adequacy of the magnification remains in question. Nor do we know the sea conditions ... i.e. how high the waves are.
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I had to go back and find what you are quoting because "
This" (which you say is false) is not contained in your quote.
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"These photographs clearly reveal that the hulls of these two ships progressively disappeared as the ships moved farther away. This is consistent with what we would expect if the earth is spherical, but this cannot be explained if the earth is flat.".
The author says, "These photographs clearly reveal..." and you say these photographs are not clear but blurry.
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The author isn't talking about the resolution of the photos. He's referring to the clarity of the evidence that the two ships progressively disappeared (from the bottom up, gradually) as the ships moved farther away.
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You can see (or you ought to be able to see) that even with additional blurriness as they moved away, it is evident that the blue water under the ship is not the same thing as a view of the hulls which are evidently obscured by the blue water.
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If the earth were "flat" we would still be able to see the first ship's hull, even with additional blurriness.
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When the hull is no longer visible, such as in Figures 6 through 10 (first ship), the magnification is adequate (you say it's in question?) to show the containers on deck and therefore we ought to see the hull too, but we can't.
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Some technical info is given for the camera and lens:
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I mounted a digital SLR camera on a 3.5-inch Questar telescope, having a 1,200-mm focal length. The ISO setting on the camera was 100 for all photographs.".
Are you suggesting that the lens or the camera are somehow questionable? 1,200 mm focal length is more power than most sports photographers use for football games, for example. Do you think more magnification is needed here? Or what?
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What manner of magnification would you be satisfied with? If anything?
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As for "how high the waves are" it would be nice to know what the swell height was that day, but let's face it, there are no white caps anywhere so we know from that alone that the seas were not choppy. If the swells were high we would see some effects of that in the images of the water but there isn't any. We could expect a swell height of about 4 feet for such conditions, but certainly no more than 6 feet. The hulls of such container ships are generally 50 feet high above the water line, and you can estimate that by the comparative size of the standard containers on the deck. The first image, Figure 4, shows 8 levels of containers with a partially obscured ship hull height of 6 container heights. So the first ship had a hull height of at least 8 container heights since the painted letters are never touching the water line of container ships.
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Do you suppose that 50 feet of hull can be hidden behind less than 10 feet of swell on a "flat" earth? Or what?
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Why is this difficult for you to recognize? It sounds like you're trying to say that since you don't like the magnification (for the increasing blurriness?) you therefore think a "flat" earth is consistent with these photographs. How so?
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