10%

Which way is up 2

By Matthew Coad

November 20^th, 2025

Pretty soon after I received my first drone I spent considerable time thinking about how I could use it to provide evidence of the curvature of the earth.

Photograph tall towers near and far maybe? Go back to those powerlines in the Hay plains and get shots from a variety of angles?

Then one day I was in Geelong, a large city close to Melbourne, Australia, and there it was plain as day. It turns out that the Bellarine Peninsula is one of those locations where you can see a city clearly being cut off by the horizon.

On my original take I photographed the city from multiple distances at the same heights using my drone. Click on the photo below to check it out.

Recently I was back in Geelong I was wondering if I could do a better job using my brand spanking new Mavic Pro 4 drone with its 100 megapixel camera and hooooo boy yeah.

This time round I'm at one location, Leopold. The photo below helps sets the scene. Its pointing directly away from the city. Its shows that its right on sunset and by pure chance the sun is shining through a gap in the clouds. Clicking on the photo will go to its location on google maps.

I get as close to the ocean as I can and launch. The photo below is taken at head height. The setting sun is reflecting off the glass covered buildings in the distance. Its gorgeous.

What you can't see what I'm talking about? The website provider I use automatically cuts down the resolution of uploaded photos and Melbourne is a long, long way away. However click on the photo and it will navigate to an online gallery that contains the full resolution images in a new window.

Download them onto your workstation and zoom in to your hearts content. The originals photos are there. Go over them with a fine tooth comb. Check that the metadata is consistent with the story I'm telling.

If you cant be bothered with all that, I've done a bit of zooming for you. Hmmm not bad but still a bit fuzzy.

When presented with this sort of image a frequent critique you will get from flat earth advocates is that if you zoom-in with a camera with a long lens the missing details will come into focus.

Well the Mavic Pro 4 has a 6 times optical zoom with 25 megapixel resolution. This lets me take the following photo which is at the same location, same height, but optically zoomed in 6 times.

Ah nice. Clearer image. But it doesn't look like much in the way of missing details have come into view. This is pretty much what I would expect.

Make sure to take note of the green and brown channel markers mixed in with the buildings.

Did I mention that I was taking these photos with a drone? Hmmm, what will we see if I send it straight up 150 meters and took another photo at the same time, same place and the same optical zoom?

No need to wonder, here it is.

And OMG I can't believe the timing. Not planned I assure you. The sun is just barely above the horizon and the building are partially in the shadow of the earth. AND YOU CAN SEE IT PLAIN AS DAY! OMG, OMG, OMG.

Okay, okay calm down, clam down.

In this picture the missing details are clearly visible. Zooming in optically made very little difference to what was visible, but going higher most definitely did.

This is perfectly consistent with Port Phillip Bay being appreciably curving downward across the ~60 kilometer distance at which this photo was taken, and inconsistent with Port Phillip Bay being flat.

And in this photo you can clearly see those channel markers, now clearly in the foreground and much closer that the buildings.

To make the difference even clearer I took the low photo and overlayed the high photo so the visible portions of the building above the horizon matched up. Then did a bit of image tweaking so you can still see the high photo buildings through the surface of the bay.

This image clearly shows how in the low photo the bottoms of the buildings are clearly below the horizon and no amount of zooming in will reveal them.

And checkout those nearby channel markers that would just be a few meters tall! There tops are clearly higher than many of the buildings that are hundreds of meters high! Again not something I planned to show as I didn't even see them till I downloaded the photos onto my workstation.

Now I am an experienced drone photographer and I'm using the latest and greatest consumer level drone technology to make my case to the world.

However on the Bellarine Peninsula you don't need it. Here you can clearly see Melbourne sink into Port Phillip Bay with the naked eye.

The Bellarine Peninsula is a popular tourist destination about an hour and a half drive from a modern city. If you want to see this effect for yourself its a perfectly nice place for a holiday.

The location you can see it best is Port Arlington. This little seaside village is surrounded by hills. If you keep your eye on the city as your companion drives into the village you will clearly see the city "descend" into the bay.

Another great location to see Melbourne partially below the waves with the naked eye is the ferry that runs from Queenscliff to Portsea. Touring around the bay is a very popular day trip.

The main caveat is that smog does frequently obscure the city. I've had an idea a few times, rushed down to the bay to implement it and been faced with a wall of grey where the city should be. Cold, windy days give you the best chance of seeing the effect.