Horizon

The horizon or skyline is the apparent line that separates earth from sky, the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth's surface, and those that do not.The true horizon is actually a theoretical line, which can only be observed when it lies on the sea surface. At many locations, this line is obscured by land, trees, buildings, mountains, etc., and the resulting intersection of earth and sky is called the visible horizon. When looking at a sea from a shore, the part of the sea closest to the horizon is called the offing. The horizon or skyline is the apparent line that separates earth from sky, the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth's surface, and those that do not.The true horizon is actually a theoretical line, which can only be observed when it lies on the sea surface. At many locations, this line is obscured by land, trees, buildings, mountains, etc., and the resulting intersection of earth and sky is called the visible horizon. When looking at a sea from a shore, the part of the sea closest to the horizon is called the offing. The true horizon is horizontal. It surrounds the observer and it is typically assumed to be a circle, drawn on the surface of a perfectly spherical model of the Earth. Its center is below the observer and below sea level. Its distance from the observer varies from day to day due to atmospheric refraction, which is greatly affected by weather conditions. Also, the higher the observer's eyes are from sea level, the farther away the horizon is from the observer. For instance, in standard atmospheric conditions, for an observer with eye level above sea level by 1.70 metres (5 ft 7 in), the horizon is at a distance of about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi). When observed from very high standpoints, such as a space station, the horizon is much farther away and it encompasses a much larger area of Earth's surface. In this case, it becomes evident that the horizon more closely resembles an ellipse than a perfect circle, especially when the observer is above the equator, and that the Earth's surface can be better modeled as an ellipsoid than as a sphere. The word horizon derives from the Greek 'ὁρίζων κύκλος' horizōn kyklos, 'separating circle',, where 'ὁρίζων' is from the verb ὁρίζω horizō, 'to divide', 'to separate', which in turn derives from 'ὅρος' (oros), 'boundary, landmark'. 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 that this range implied. This importance lessened with the development of the radio and the telegraph, but even today, when flying an aircraft under visual flight rules, a technique called attitude flying is used to control the aircraft, where the pilot uses the visual relationship between the aircraft's nose and the horizon to control the aircraft. A pilot can also retain his or her spatial orientation by referring to the horizon. In many contexts, especially perspective drawing, the curvature of the Earth is disregarded and the horizon is considered the theoretical line to which points on any horizontal plane converge (when projected onto the picture plane) as their distance from the observer increases. For observers near sea level the difference between this geometrical horizon (which assumes a perfectly flat, infinite ground plane) and the true horizon (which assumes a spherical Earth surface) is imperceptible to the unaided eye (but for someone on a 1000-meter hill looking out to sea the true horizon will be about a degree below a horizontal line). In astronomy, the horizon is the horizontal plane through the eyes of the observer. It is the fundamental plane of the horizontal coordinate system, the locus of points that have an altitude of zero degrees. While similar in ways to the geometrical horizon, in this context a horizon may be considered to be a plane in space, rather than a line on a picture plane. One typically sees further along the Earth's curved surface than a simple geometric calculation allows for because of refraction error. If the ground, or water, surface is colder than the air above it, a cold, dense layer of air forms close to the surface, causing light to be refracted downward as it travels, and therefore, to some extent, to go around the curvature of the Earth. The reverse happens if the ground is hotter than the air above it, as often happens in deserts, producing mirages. As an approximate compensation for refraction, surveyors measuring distances longer than 100 meters subtract 14% from the calculated curvature error and ensure lines of sight are at least 1.5 meters from the ground, to reduce random errors created by refraction. However, ignoring the effect of atmospheric refraction, distance to the true horizon from an observer close to the Earth's surface is about