Mirage — when nature deceives

People have seen mirages since ancient times, about which many legends have been preserved. On the one hand, it is difficult to find a person who at least once in his life would not have seen the simplest mirage — a blue lake on a hot highway. On the other hand, thousands of people have observed literally hanging cities, bizarre castles and even entire armies in the sky, but here experts have no explanation for this natural phenomenon.

There are several types of mirages: lake, or lower; upper (they appear directly in the sky) or long-range vision mirages; side mirages. A more complex type of mirage is called "Fata Morgana"

The lower (lake) mirage. Lower mirages occur mainly in cases when the layers of air near the surface of the Earth (for example, in the desert) are heated so much that the rays of light coming from objects are strongly curved.

The victims of mirages are especially often caravans in the desert of Erg-er-Ravi in Northern Africa. Before people "firsthand" at a distance of 2-3 kilometers, oases appear, which in reality are at least 700 kilometers away

Upper mirage (mirage of distant vision). The air heats up from the surface of the Earth, and with altitude its temperature drops. However, if a layer of cool air turns out to be warmer (brought, for example, by southerly winds) and a highly rarefied air layer, and the transition between them is quite sharp, then refraction increases significantly. The rays of light coming from objects on the Ground describe a kind of arc and return down, sometimes tens, even hundreds of kilometers from their source. Then there is a "lifting of the horizon", or the upper mirage.

Residents of the French Riviera on a clear morning have seen more than once how on the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea, where the water merges with the sky, a chain of Corsican Mountains rises from the sea, to which about two hundred kilometers from the Cote d'Azur.

Fata Morgana is a complex optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, consisting of several forms of mirages, in which distant objects are seen repeatedly and with various distortions. For this, the most mysterious kind of mirages, convincing explanations have not yet been found. But, there are many theories.

In summer, in hot weather, when the sun is shining brightly, you can see puddles reflecting the sky in the distance on the highway. In fact, there are no puddles: this is a visual deception, a mirage!

Thousands of tourists and locals witnessed a mirage that lasted for four hours in the city of Penglai off the east coast of China. The fogs created an image of the city, with modern high-rise buildings, wide city streets and noisy cars. It rained for two days in the city of Penglai before this rare weather phenomenon occurred.

And this mirage appeared off the coast of the Chinese resort island of Hainan.