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Handout 7

The earth's curvature causes horizontal lines of sight to depart from the earth's surface. Refraction of light in the atmosphere also bends light rays toward the earth's surface. Together, these effects diminish the impact of curvature by about 14%. Two example problems are given to illustrate how to calculate height corrections due to curvature and refraction over long distances.

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Daniel Cañones
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212 views1 page

Handout 7

The earth's curvature causes horizontal lines of sight to depart from the earth's surface. Refraction of light in the atmosphere also bends light rays toward the earth's surface. Together, these effects diminish the impact of curvature by about 14%. Two example problems are given to illustrate how to calculate height corrections due to curvature and refraction over long distances.

Uploaded by

Daniel Cañones
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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EARTH’S CURVATURE AND REFRACTION

Curvature Correction
The effect of earth’s curvature is the amount by which the horizontal line departs from the earth’s surface
which is a level surface.
hc = 0.0785 K2
where:
hc = correction due to curvature
K = horizontal distance or level surface distance, in kilometers

Refraction Correction
Rays of light passing through the Earth’s atmosphere in any direction other than vertical are refracted or bent
from a straight path. This bending usually takes place in a direction toward the Earth’s surface under normal
conditions of temperature and pressure gradients.

Such bent rays of light tend to diminish the effect of curvature for a slight amount, normally about 14% or 1/7
of the curvature effect.
hcr = 0.0675 K2
where:
hcr = correction due to curvature and refraction
K = horizontal distance or level surface distance, in kilometers

ILLUSTRATIVE PROBLEMS:
1. A man standing on the ground can see just the tip of a tower 25 km away. If the eye of the man is 1.8 m
above mean sea level, determine the height of the tower above sea level considering the curvature and
refraction correction.
2. Two hills A and B, 90 km apart, has elevations of 60 m and 200 m, respectively. What should be the
minimum, height of tower that could be constructed at B so that it would be visible from A considering the
effect of curvature and refraction correction.

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