alt Hacker NewsThanks!
Well the record for the longest photographed line of sight is in the same region as our #3 longest line, at 483km https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/66661-lon... So not far off. And I think that even takes advantage of some favourable refraction. So not only might it be possible to see the longest view. But there may even be longer lines if we were to take into account extreme cases of refraction. Which is certainly something we'd love to try.
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funny to know that the record has just been broken, the latest I knew of was by Roberto Antezana, astrophotographer from Universidad de Chile, capturing the Aconcagua (6950m) peak from Cordoba, Argentina, taking advantage of the peak's altitude and the Argentinian pampa (very flat grasslands), and of course, thorough planning + lucky cooperative weather [1] [2]; he was well known before from his long distance photos of the same peak from Valparaiso bay [3], I'm from Valparaiso and the times it was possible to see that peak with the naked eye given some perfect blue sky was truly overwhelming, since then I've been thinking about how to achieve such excursion planning heuristically from topographical data available. Congratulations on your project, I will look more into the technical details but looks amazing, beautiful art and technique!
[1] https://uchile.cl/noticias/205455/astrofotografo-logra-nuevo... [2] https://dalekiewidoki.pl/2025/07/world-record-andes.html [3] https://api.flickr.com/photos/robertoantezana/4994301227/
Do the two points have to be on land? I would think since you can see the ocean from Aconcagua you'd be able to see all the way to the horizon and that would be the longest sightline
ok then, If I read you right, what counts is someone going and doing the actual seeing , VS drawing a line on a topigraphical map. there are groups on another quest flying gliders into the high stratospher riding atmospheric waves rolling up against mountains who might also qualify for setting records for the longest possible views through the atmosphear, they got started buying surplus soviet space suits as that was what made attempts possible.
Wow, that's an impressive amount of dedication, but I guess you need that if you want to set a world record:
> He monitored weather conditions closely to find the right window and right location. After a lot of travelling he arrived at Aksu village. The village wasn't accessible by car due to snow and ice so he hiked to the summit. After 10 hours of climbing, he stood on the summit with moonlight providing enough light to set up his equipment. At midnight, he recalls that the temperature was around -12°C with winds around 8 m/s. He remained there all night capturing panoramic photos. Before sunrise, the wind picked up to roughly 20-25 m/s and the battle of capturing his world record image began. He planned to capture the image at sunrise to improve contrast and whilst he is pleased with the final result, he is already making plans for his next record-breaking image.
But still, that kinda confirms my observation about the pesky atmosphere: even with optimal weather conditions, he still needed the sun lighting up the sky behind the mountains just before sunrise, otherwise they would have blended in with the sky at the horizon...
This also applies for much shorter distances: despite what the publicity photos suggest, you can't see the Alps from Munich most of the time (or only as slightly darker shapes on the horizon), although they're "only" ~ 75 km away. You need really good weather to see them clearly...