'Ships disappear over the horizon because of distance and angular resolution'

"Ships vanish hull-first because of distance and the camera's angular resolution - a good zoom brings them back."

On a sphere of radius 6,371 km, an observer with eyes about 1.5 m up has a horizon about 4.4 km away (d = 3.57 × √h). A ship's hull beyond that line is geometrically below your line of sight - no telescope, however powerful, sees what is on the other side of the horizon. The 'zoom brings it back' claim has been tested directly: at Pensacola Beach (Feb 2023) two cargo ships and a fishing boat showed their entire hulls obstructed, and the amount of obstruction was unchanged at every zoom level. The 'angular resolution' claim has also been tested: a 20× larger aperture (a 67.4 mm camera vs a 3.36 mm phone lens) showed exactly the same obstruction - the Rayleigh criterion blurs detail, it does not make objects disappear.

The horizon-distance formula (d = 3.57 × √h); the Pensacola observation (unedited photos with EXIF + unedited video); the P1000 vs iPhone aperture comparison (0.00057° vs 0.01144° resolution, identical obstruction). The same geometry is why the $10 horizon-dip clinometer works: the horizon is a line, and it is below your eyes.