Can you see the Isles of Scilly from Cornwall?

Can you see the Isles of Scilly from Cornwall?

9/5/2018 9:59:39 PM

I saw them using binoculars aboard the Brittany Ferry service from Plymouth, Devon to Roscoff, Brittany on 25th August 2018. Halangy Down Transmitter on St Marys was visible. The visibility was excellent, but perhaps there was a temperature inversion happening, or something like it, since I wouldn’t have expected to be able to see over such a great distance (approx 90 – 95 miles). I have seen the Lizard peninsula from Rame Head before with the naked eye, which is about 45 – 50 miles, and that was unusual, so I was really excited to see the Isles of Scilly.

7/21/2018 8:24:01 PM

I saw the islands from near St Just last week, a distance of almost 30 miles. Very faint, but definitely visible. I had no trouble with binoculars separating the islands and the hill on Samson.

10/21/2017 1:32:29 PM

They can be seen from Cornwall, and photographic evidence isn’t hard to find.

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Isles of Scilly from Gwennap Head. Source: Bob Jones via Wikimedia Commons.

10/20/2017 1:17:02 PM

The site HeyWhatsThat.com is a pretty neat tool for answering this sort of question. I’ve taken the liberty of creating a map showing the view from Lands End, which should be available to everyone at that link. Here’s the computer-generated panorama:

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The Isles of Scilly are barely visible above the horizon (the horizontal magenta line) to the west-southwest, in the direction of the brown line. The site also calculates the entire “viewshed” from Lands End and displays it on a map:

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As can be seen from the pink shading on the Isles, their peaks can be seen from Lands End. However, it is not possible to see from the cliffs at Lands End to the beaches of the Isles.

10/20/2017 10:13:03 AM

Based on Mark Mayos excellent answer to this question and calculating the height 80 metres close to the Cornwall coast line you can only see a maximum of 32km with the naked eye.

This is based on the calculation:

calculation

where d = distance in km and h = height in metres.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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