Sunday 7 February 2016

74) “From Genoa, Italy at a height of just 70 feet above sea-level, the island of Gorgona can often be seen 81 miles away. If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference, Gorgona should be hidden beyond 3,332 feet of curvature.”

Very phony numbers


The cited 70 feet above sea-level are clearly nonsense when you look at the source of an Italian youtube-video. These pictures must have been taken from one of the tallest buildings or highest points of observation in or around Genoa.

One seems to have been shot from one of the mountains surrounding Genoa.
There's even one scene where you can see a small airplane fly by BELOW the observer.
Monte Fasce just outside the central city is 834 meters high
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Fasce

Here are the coordinates of the building in the first picture: 44°24'16.44"N   8°56'9.37"E.
It's Terrazza Martini Tower, 116m high and standing on roughly 20m ground elevation (according to google earth). The observer is clearly standing higher than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrazza_Martini_Tower

Since the 70 feet (21m!) are so utterly misleading and you can't tell the distances from the video, for all following pictures from Genoa I'll calculate with 300m height.

(Sources for calculations: See #69&70)
Gorgona has an elevation of 254m, with 300m observing height in Genoa and refraction coefficient of 0.2 (this is a generous guess for these kinds of conditions) at a distance of 131km you get 143.7km of added intersecting sight lines. Gorgona is visible.

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