How far is the Horizon??

Jan 17, 2009

 

 

“The square root of your height (or elevation) in feet times 1.2 equals the distance to your horizon in miles.

So, how high would Sarah Palin’s house have to be inorder to see Russia?:

Wasilla, Alaska, is 1130 km from Russia.

How high above the Earth’s surface do you have to be to see a point 1130 km away along the Earth’s surface? If we start plugging numbers into myDistance To Horizon Calculator, we see that the answer is 101425.88 meters. You have to go 101 km (63 miles!) above Wasilla before you can see Russia. You can knock 104 meters off of that if you like to account for Wasilla’s elevation above sea level.

 

 

Height (meters)	Distance (km)	Height(feet)	Distance (miles)
0	0.0	0.0	0.0
1	3.6	3.3	2.1
2	5.1	6.6	3.0
3	6.2	9.8	3.7
4	7.1	13.1	4.3
5	8.0	16.4	4.8
6	8.7	19.7	5.2
7	9.4	23.0	5.7
8	10.1	26.2	6.1
9	10.7	29.5	6.4
10	11.3	32.8	6.8
20	16.0	65.6	9.6
30	19.5	98.4	11.7
40	22.6	131.2	13.5
50	25.2	164.0	15.1
60	27.6	196.8	16.6
70	29.9	229.6	17.9
80	31.9	262.4	19.2
90	33.9	295.2	20.3
100	35.7	328.0	21.4
1000	112.8	3280.0	67.7
2000	159.6	6560.0	95.7
5000	252.3	16,400.0	151.4
10,000	356.9	32,800.0	214.2
12,000	391.0	39,360.0	234.6
100,000	1,132.7	328,000.0	679.6
500,000	2,572.0	1,640,000.0	1543.2
1,000,000,000	1,006,344.9	3,280,000,000.0	603,806.9