Use This Simple Camera Accessory to Defeat the Whole Flat Earth Argument

As I dig more and more into the recent rise of the flat earth phenomenon, it just gets easier and easier to spot their half-truths that promote their cult-like belief system. Their ad hoc solutions to problems just create more problems that they then have to create more ad hoc solutions in order to solve.

The meme above is a good example of this, where they tell a half-truth in order to maintain their unscientific illusion about one of their necessary ad hoc inventions.

Why Flat Earthers Care About the Size of the Sun

On a flat earth, the sun has a problem. If the sun is far away and as big as it is on a globe earth, then they never have night. If the sun 'sets' over the side, then everyone in the world has daytime and nighttime at the same time. So, the ad hoc solution to this was to create a sun that is close enough and small enough to illuminate exactly half the earth at one time and have it go in a circle over the earth to illuminate different areas at different times.

While this MIGHT make some sense in the northern hemisphere (but there are still a lot of problems with it that we'll go into in other articles), in the southern hemisphere it becomes a huge problem because It's Impossible On Flat Earth to Have 24 Hours of Daylight in an Antarctic Summer.

But the problems with the flat earth sun are just getting started. One of the big problems for flat earthers is that on a globe, the sun stays the same angular or apparent size, the way it looks to a human observer, on any individual day. This is one way we know that the sun is very large and extremely far away.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

On a flat earth, however, the sun is so close that it would need to appear to change size throughout the day due to perspective. There is a great Interactive Flat Earth Sun Simulator on Geogebra here, if you are interested in what the size change of the sun would be, according to the flat earth mostly official mythology. As an aside, note that the calculator shows, as other calculators and simulators do as well, the sun never actually setting, since the geometry simply doesn't work. But that is a topic for another day.

Unfortunately for them, in reality, the sun stays the same apparent size. To make matters more complicated, the sun sometimes looks like it changes angular size due to different atmospheric conditions. This allows flat earhers to cherry-pick images that appear to support their claims. But with a bit of knowledge, you will be able to easily spot these types of images.

Why Flat Earthers Don't Use Solar Filters

Flat earthers do not like solar filters. Why? Because they remove the sunbeams and atmospheric distortion that often occur in images of the sun, making the sun look larger and smaller throughout the day. It is more beneficial to them to have these distortions because, without them, they cannot make the case that the sun changes apparent size. I've included an image below of suns with and without atmospheric distortion.

Image credit: my own

See how the edges of the sun are crisp and clean in the one on the right? That's how you know there is little to know atmospheric distortion or they are using a solar filter. You can see the effects of this atmospheric distortion or glare in this gif of a solar eclipse in Australia. See how the sun looks very large at first, but when the eclipse starts, it shrinks to a fraction of it's original size. That size when it's small is what it's actual viewing size is without any glare.

Watch for a bit and you'll see the sun shrink to it's natural size as the eclipse shades the glare
Image Credit: Click Here to See the Full Video

What Happens When You Time Lapse With a Solar Filter?

Since we now know that solar filters show us the true nature of our viewing size of the sun, we can now take a look at the size of the sun when a time lapse is done with a solar filter, or without atmospheric distortion. This is a great video using a telescope with an attachment that tracks the sun all day.

As you can see, the sun does not shrink in the sky, but remains the same size at the same level of focus, giving us an 'apples to apples' comparison of the angular size of the sun throughout the day. You can also see this phenomenon in multiple exposure photos where the edges of the sun are crisp and clean, as you can see in this Multiple Exposure Image of the Sunset In Norway.

The Moon Makes a Fine Substitute

Since flat earthers also claim the sun and moon are similar distances away from us on the 'firmament' that rotates around us and they both 'set' due to getting too far away to see, we can use time lapses or multiple exposures of the moon as a reference point to see if it is consistent with a globe earth model or the flat earth idea. See the beautiful lunar eclipse multiple exposure image below.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

For anyone looking for truth, taking a lunar time lapse, or a solar time lapse with a solar filter is a great way to see for yourself if the claims of flat earthers hold up to scrutiny, and to collect evidence of the shape of the earth yourself.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and that you will resteeem, upvote, and comment to continue to help flat earth debunkers rise to the top of Steemit to help provide easy to understand scientific information to anyone who might be looking into this cult that is exploding in popularity.