![]() ![]() The atmosphere is bending the light around the curve of the globe!įor much more information on mirages and other effects of refraction, check out the links on the next page. ![]() When it looks like the sun is about to drop below the horizon, it already has. When the sun is low in the sky, it appears to be higher than it actually is because of this refraction. As light from the sun enters our atmosphere, it slows down considerably. You can see a similar optical illusion any day when the sky is clear. This situation might also distort images, making a boat seem much taller than it actually is. These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles. The term Fata Morgana is the Italian translation of 'Morgan the Fairy' ( Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend). For example, you might see a mass of land or a boat floating in midair. A Fata Morgana ( Italian: fata morana) is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. This mirage causes you to see a scene much higher than it should be. As Wired explains, a superior mirage what we've dubbed fata morgana appears when colder temperatures hover under warmer temperatures, known as a 'thermal inversion.' Light from a distant object, even one beyond the visible cut-off of Earth's curvature, passes through the colder, denser air, and is refracted down. This occurs when there is a cooler level of air lower than a warmer level of air, typically over icy landscapes or very cold water. Superior mirages are mirages that form above the horizon. This sort of mirage is called an inferior mirage because it appears below the horizon. This mirage looks just like a puddle of water on the road because, like a puddle of water, it's reflecting what's above it. Your brain assumes that the light is traveling in a straight line, so it seems like there's a mirror image beneath the normal image. The light from the lower part of the car bends farther upward than the light from the top of the car, so the mirage image looks like a reflection. The effect is that you see the image of the car twice: once on top of the road, and once in the road surface. The light that would ordinarily go straight to the ground bends upward and travels to your eyes. The lower part of the light wave passes between the layers first, so it speeds up an instant before the upper part. As you can see in the diagram below, this produces an interesting effect. But some of the light that would normally hit the ground actually bends in midair because it moves from the cooler, denser air level into the hotter, less dense air right above the ground. ![]() On a sunnier day, the light heading straight toward you acts just like it usually does - it doesn't move through different layers of air density, so it doesn't bend much. This is how you see things most of the time. On an overcast day, you only see the light that bounces off the car straight toward you. You see the car when your eyes detect this light. Warner connects this to fata morgana showing a ship from beyond the horizon: The mirage vessel could suddenly disappear with no explanation, and there you have your legend.Normally, sunlight bouncing off an object (let's say a car) reflects in all directions. The tale was first popularized in a story called “ Vanderdecken’s Message Home” from 1821, which told of a boat from Amsterdam that haunts the Cape of Good Hope, trying to hand off letters from its dead crew to the vessels of the living ( uh, no thanks, the sailors would say, you can deliver your own damn mail). The Second Book of Maccabees, for example, tells of sky-people coming to the aid of the Jews in their skirmishes with the Romans: “When the battle became fierce, there appeared to the enemy from heaven five resplendent men on horses with golden bridles, and they were leading the Jews.” The ghostly warriors fired arrows and thunderbolts at the rascally Romans, “so that, confused and blinded, they were thrown into disorder and cut to pieces.”įata morgana’s most famous offspring, though, is the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship said to sail aimlessly around the high seas. Another Italian version of the legend has Morgan falling in love with a regular fella, granting him immortality, and keeping him in captivity, then putting on shows in the sky when he gets bored with the whole never dying thing.Īnd long before Arthurian legend, it could have been that sightings of these phenomena gave rise to any number of the “whoa something is appearing in the sky” scenes in antiquity, Warner argues. John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (1880), via Fine Art Photographic/Getty ImagesĪccording to Warner, the Normans brought stories of Morgan’s magic to Italy, particularly her penchant for luring sailors to an undersea palace with visions of castles in the air-fata morgana is particularly prevalent in southern Italy's Strait of Messina, where Father Giardina experienced his own vision. Morgan le Fay: fairy, enchantress, sandal enthusiast. ![]()
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