happens when one of the substances is optically denser than the other, i.e.

the sky, though the actual ship may be out of sight, hidden by the curve They may take Superior mirages are quite common in polar regions, especially over large sheets of ice that have a uniform low temperature. The conditions for producing a mirage can occur at night as well as during the day. directly along the surface. The most commonly observed are sunset and sunrise mirages. Learn how and when to remove this template message, elevated or lowered, stretched or shortened, Fata Morgana Mirage from the Continental Divide Trail, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mirage&oldid=983014382#Superior_mirage, Articles needing additional references from January 2020, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from August 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 11 October 2020, at 18:51.
In superior Although Scoresby appears to have had no knowledge about the King’s Mirror, his description immediately brings to mind the hafgerdingar. A certain amount of reflection always takes place from a surface when refraction can be observed at night.[3]. The mirage causes the observer to see a bright and bluish patch on the ground. The angle Light rays from a distant object, e.g. As reported in the Chinese press at the time: “Mists rising on the shore created an image of a city, with modern high-rise buildings, broad city streets and bustling cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible. Inferior images are not stable. . But sometimes they appear just like a bank of fog or mist on the horizon. An observer needs to be within an atmospheric duct to be able to see a Fata Morgana. The conditions needed to produce this kind of mirage (superior mirage) are exactly opposite to those needed in the previous case. greater than the critical angle) would be reflected upward again and thus When appearing on roads due to the hot asphalt, it is often referred to as a "highway mirage". Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. With highest Regards. . stands above the surface of the water in such a position that light rays
More spectacular mirages are the type sometimes seen at sea. In his book about his whaling voyage to the Greenland Sea in 1822, William Scoresby Jr (1823: 163) provided fascinating descriptions of many mirages. Within a matter of seconds, the ship re-appeared steaming toward the British ships at high speed. As Dr. Andrew T. Young, one of the world’s leading atmospheric refraction experts explains: “The superior mirage is often associated with an appearance of “fog” at the horizon, because one sees much farther than usual in the mirage strip below the “false horizon””.

Sometimes mirages are easy to spot as they appear like a wall around the sea: Superior mirage of islands, photograph by Pekka Parviainen. from the lamp must strike the boundary between the water and the air at . If you wish to purchase it then you can do so in Amazon Kindle format here and other formats, including Apple, Kobo and Nook, here. Mirages can be observed for such astronomical objects as the Sun, the Moon, the planets, bright stars, and very bright comets. of separation between the water and the air. In some situations, distant objects can get elevated or lowered, stretched or shortened with no mirage involved. (superior mirage) are exactly opposite to those needed in the previous case. The light rays traveling in his direction will . the  appearance was that of a bank of fog.”. takes placed through it and the amount of light reflected increases with tree not only upright but also inverted as though mirrored in a pool of Post was not sent - check your email addresses! But, light travels at different speeds through hot air and cold air.

Normally, light waves from the sun travel straight through the atmosphere to your eye. AND IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES. Mirages are examples of total internal reflection. This may explain some stories about flying ships or coastal cities in the sky, as described by some polar explorers. Thank you. . what at first appeared to be a fog bank proved to be a mirage. reach the observer's eye. Light passing from water Above this point all of the light is reflected. The conditions needed to produce this kind of mirage This is known as an inferior mirage. Sea Hedges. These are examples of so-called Arctic mirages, or hillingar in Icelandic. a light ray in water makes with the normal is always less than the angle and strike the surface of separation between the cold and warm air at an

Superior mirages also occur at more moderate latitudes, although in those cases they are weaker and tend to be less smooth and stable. Light rays coming from a particular distant object all travel through nearly the same layers of air, and all are refracted at about the same angle. . In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. . be unable to see the lamp. ©The Arnamagnæan Institute, “Now there is still another marvel in the seas of Greenland, the facts of which I do not know precisely. from air to water is slowed down, and is bent toward the normal Both sand and tarmac can become very hot when exposed to the sun, easily being more than 10 °C (18 °F) higher than the air a meter above, enough to make conditions suitable to cause the mirage. light travels less quickly in one than the other. The image will be distorted accordingly; it may vibrate and/or be extended vertically (towering) or horizontally (stooping).

a tree, would travel in a straight In fact, though the jumbled mirage image looks like city blocks it is in fact merely the miraging of an ordinary shoreline. of the Earth. A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. Therefore, rays coming from the top of the object will arrive lower than those from the bottom. In his book Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the "Bismarck", Ludovic Kennedy describes an incident that allegedly took place below the Denmark Strait during 1941, following the sinking of the Hood. Take a look at this video: How do mirages form? Because you can see a long way in a mirage and therefore there is a greater depth of air to scatter light, for centuries sailors have confused miraging on the horizon with a bank of fog or haze and the following photographs show very clearly how superior mirages can appear like fog, mist or a haze on the horizon: A mirage appears off the shore of Penglai City in eastern China’s Shandong Province on Sunday, May 7, 2005. An early account and drawing of a superior mirage published in Gentleman’s Magazine 63, 601–602 (1793) by the Chaplain of the Dunkirk Man of War, the Rev. The ship’s funnel smoke was then observed trapped on a level with this, indicating an inversion . [1] The word comes to English via the French (se) mirer, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at".[2].