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Corsica seen from Liguria: dream or wake up?
February 09, 2021
During the winter season, especially on cold days, if you happen to hear a Ligurian say that he has seen Corsica from his balcony, don't dismiss him as a visionary! Perhaps not everyone knows that the highest Corsican peaks are easily visible from our coast! We recently experienced this from our farmhouse in Diano Marina, when, at sunrise, we put aside our work in the greenhouses for a few minutes to admire the spectacular view before our eyes!
Why can you see Corsica from Liguria?
A palette of warm pastel colours is what we see when we grow our artichokes or prepare the greenhouse for our ox-heart tomatoes during the winter season. It is precisely the fiery colour at dawn and dusk that allows us to see the dark, jagged outline of Corsica in contrast. The work of a farmer seems almost weightless when accompanied by such a spectacle!
Intrigued by this phenomenon, we asked ourselves whether what we have observed so many times is not due to an optical illusion or whether, as we have always maintained, it is simply reality, favoured by certain atmospheric conditions.
A mathematical formula is all we need
What we discovered really cheered us up. This is not imagination, nor daydreaming. What we are looking at is Corsica itself, which is only 180 km from the Ligurian coast. To be precise, all we can see are the mountains, since the curvature of the earth does not allow us to see the shores.
It is therefore the highest reliefs, those that reach an altitude of around 1000 metres that are also visible from Liguria. Let's take Monte Cinto (2706 metres) as a reference, which is 180 km from our coast. Thanks to a mathematical formula we can establish up to what distance Corsica can be intercepted on the horizon.
The formula is: D=2.04 x (√H+√E). Don't worry, nothing too complicated. "D" represents the range, "2.04" the curvature constant, "H" the established height in metres above sea level of the observed point and "E" the height from the observation point.
This is what we obtained from our calculations: D=2.04 x (√2706+√18) = 114.77 nautical miles, or 212.55404 km.
Monte Cinto is 184.5 km away from Le Girandole and we can assure you that the view of Corsica is anything but a mirage. To see for yourself, all you have to do is book one of our flats during the low season!
Curiosities and insights: We learned the mathematical formula from an article on the same subject published on Wikipedia .
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