A strip of water across the road, moving away whenever the car approaches it. Gloomy medieval castles hovering over the sea. What do these pictures have in common?

These are mirages. They are created as a result of a complex game of air and light. Mirages can be as simple as a strip of water across a highway 100 meters in front of a car. But there are mirages very complex in design.

Mirage Description

In 1643, the Italian priest Angelucci described the incredible and wonderful vision that appeared to him during a sea voyage. Here is what he says. At first, his eyes did not imagine anything but a calm smooth surface that stretched to the horizon. Then a dark mountain range appeared on the horizon. Ahead of mountain peaks from the sea began to grow tall dirty white columns. Gradually, the columns began to bend and turned into Romanesque arches. At the end of this grand spectacle, silhouettes of towers and walls of a mighty fortress appeared on the arches.

Italians call such a mirage a fata - morgana (fata morgana, from Italian fata - “miracle”). There are ancient Celtic legends about King Arthur and his knights. Arthur had a sister - the sorceress of Morgan le Fey. She knew how to make castles soaring in the air. Air is really a magical part of a mirage. From physics, we know that at the boundary of two media, light rays are refracted, that is, they change their direction. These two media in the atmosphere are layers of air.

How does a mirage arise?

In hot weather, the layer of air adjacent to the hot earth has a higher temperature than the upper atmosphere. The higher the air temperature, the lower its density. This is the whole focus. More dense air refracts light more than less dense. That is, a ray of light, crossing the border of warm and cold air, is refracted. Now consider the course of the rays falling from the sky.

These rays are mainly painted in blue - the color of the sky. Part of the rays, without refracting, reaches the eye of the observer and forms a picture of the sky. The other part refracts and falls to the ground in front of the observer. Reflected from the ground, these reflected rays, in turn, also fall into the eye of the observer. But these are all the same rays of the blue sky. Therefore, passengers of the car see a blue section ahead. The surface layer of air on a hot day constantly fluctuates, resulting in the impression, and this creates the illusion of a water surface.

Mirages are not a game of imagination. They were even filmed. Rays of light are refracted when crossing the border of warm and cold air.

When does a mirage occur?

A mirage can also occur in the opposite situation. This situation often develops above the surface of the sea. The rays of light reflected from the surface of the sea are refracted at the boundary of cold and warm air and go into the sky, and when reflected from it, they again return to the earth. That is why a ship sailing beyond the horizon may suddenly appear in the sky. The huge "Flying Dutchman" floating among the clouds.

Mirages can occur in a storm and calm. A picture similar to the one seen by the Reverend Father Angelucci is a picture of the calm surface of the sea, reflected in the sky at different angles and returned to the earth by intricate images of columns and castles.

Ghostly castles in the air and other mirages were filmed. Filmed successfully. This proves that a mirage is not a game of imagination. A thirsty traveler who sees an oasis with a well in the desert does not hallucinate. He sees a real oasis, which, reflected in the red-hot sky of the desert, returned to the earth in the form of a ghost.