Which phenomenon caused early Islamic scholars to incorrectly model atmospheric refraction near the horizon?

💡 Explanation

When modeling atmospheric refraction, simplistic models in early Islamic astronomy underestimated the increasing air density gradient towards the Earth's surface, leading to underestimated refraction near the horizon. Therefore, underestimating air density gradients results, rather than overestimating parallax, neglecting scattering, or Earth's oblateness effects which are relevant but secondary.

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