Fun Holidays - Call of the Horizon Day

When you are outside the city and looking into an open field, or sitting on the shore of the ocean or large lake, you can see a point where the earth and sky seem to meet Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the horizon? Have you ever felt it calling you to go on an adventure or expedition? July 9, Call of the Horizon Day - experience this feeling while looking into the distance, at the horizon and into the unknown It's about dreaming big, moving and having adventures, both physical and mental This is the day to take hold of those dreams and plan how you will make them come true Celebrate the day by driving or going out to a place with a view of the skyline Most likely, you will have to go out of town and find a flat area or come to a large body of water Take a notepad with you and write down everything that comes to your mind that you would like to do Is there a place you've been meaning to visit? Is there a project you'd like to take on or a hobby you'd like to try? Write down everything that the horizon calls you to do Then spend the rest of the day starting to plan how you will achieve your dreams 1 The horizon is usually defined as the line separating the Earth from the Sky However, the word is also often used in geology to describe the line separating two layers of soil or rock 2 The word horizon comes from the Greek word orizein, which means to limit or divide 3 The true horizon is a theoretical horizontal line, actually a circle with the observer at the center Usually the true horizon is not visible because there are hills, mountains, buildings, trees, etc in the way The only time you can see this is when looking out to sea 4 How far is it to the horizon? The distance to the visible horizon depends largely on weather conditions and how high up the observer is This requires complex mathematical formulas, which we will not go into here However, for a person whose eyes are 170 meters above the ground, standing at sea level under standard atmospheric conditions, the horizon is about 5 kilometers away 5 On other planets, the horizon will be at a different distance from you depending on the radius of the planet On Mars, for example, the horizon is 73% further than it would be on Earth, and on the Moon it is 52% 6 Get high enough and the horizon changes from a straight line to a slight curve (the curvature of the Earth) And when it goes into orbit, it will become part of an ellipse, because the Earth is not a perfect sphere 7 This brings us to the topic of Flat Earthers People who lived before the Middle Ages, and even some people living today, interpret the horizon as the edge of the Earth from which you will fall if you ever reach it Oddly enough, no one has ever done this However, observing the horizon helped prove that the Earth is a sphere Aristotle noticed that the further south he went, the higher some constellations rose above the horizon 8 When describing the position of the Earth relative to the rest of the sky, astronomers use a concept called the celestial or astronomical horizon, an imaginary horizontal plane always at an angle of 90 degrees to the observer's zenith (the point directly above them) 9 Before we invented radio and satellite navigation, the horizon was extremely important for navigation and communication You could only communicate with another ship if you could actually see it, and the position of the Sun and stars relative to the horizon helped early sailors determine where they were, how long they were, and in what direction they were sailing