Serious Question...If you pause the video at 15:23. There are two images. One appears to show the earth round. One appears to show the earth completely flat I put a ruler on it.....and ironically the flat appearance is in the higher altitude camera. ..So I don't know what the question should be.....which one is correct?
So the right side is higher in altitude, as it is the second stage. However, it has two cameras, alternating and showing two different vantage points — one shows engine in line with earth, the second shows an engine with space behind it and a much smaller section of earth in the frame. Smaller section has correspondingly less arc, so what length of arc you can see looks less curved. Over time though, earth pans across both first and second stage cameras, just at different times, and you can see the curvature in both cameras of the second stage. I agree this can be confusing.
Well, the Earth is round, so the only question is why the one image made the horizon appear straight. If I recall correctly, that was the camera on the second stage, which may have had a different field of view. As someone already suggested, if the field of view was small (but magnified), the Earth curvature could look flat. (I recall the engine assembly blocking the center of the horizon span, which may have contributed to the appearance by omitting the center bulge.) My own hunch is that the exhaust plume was refracting the image slightly
Serious Question...If you pause the video at 15:23. There are two images. One appears to show the earth round. One appears to show the earth completely flat I put a ruler on it.....and ironically the flat appearance is in the higher altitude camera. ..So I don't know what the question should be.....which one is correct?
So the right side is higher in altitude, as it is the second stage. However, it has two cameras, alternating and showing two different vantage points — one shows engine in line with earth, the second shows an engine with space behind it and a much smaller section of earth in the frame. Smaller section has correspondingly less arc, so what length of arc you can see looks less curved. Over time though, earth pans across both first and second stage cameras, just at different times, and you can see the curvature in both cameras of the second stage. I agree this can be confusing.
Well, the Earth is round, so the only question is why the one image made the horizon appear straight. If I recall correctly, that was the camera on the second stage, which may have had a different field of view. As someone already suggested, if the field of view was small (but magnified), the Earth curvature could look flat. (I recall the engine assembly blocking the center of the horizon span, which may have contributed to the appearance by omitting the center bulge.) My own hunch is that the exhaust plume was refracting the image slightly