How far can you see on the open ocean?

422 views

How far can you see on the open ocean?

In: 45

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Depends on how tall you are/how high above the water you are. Also depends on if you’re talking about distance in a straight line from your eyes vs distance on the surface of the Earth.

When you’re near the surface, it changes pretty quickly with how high you go, when you’re very far away you can see nearly half the planet(you’d need to be infinitely away to have line of sight to exactly half the planet).

h = height above earth’s surface
r = earth’s radius
d = straight line distance from your eyes to the horizon

You can make a right triangle with sides r, d, and (r+h), with r+h being the hypotenuse. Then use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate what d is.

Ends up being distance = sqrt(2* radius of earth * height + height^2)

You are viewing 1 out of 8 answers, click here to view all answers.