David Morris / APEX
A man says he was “amazed” to look out to sea from a village in Cornwall, southwest England, and see a giant ship apparently suspended in the air over water. It is not his eyes that deceive him, but a rare meteorological phenomenon that causes the optical illusion.
BBC News meteorologist David Braine explained that what David Morris had captured with the lens of his camera was not levitation, but a “superior mirage” caused by conditions more typical in the cold Arctic than off the English coast.
David Morris / APEX
“Superior mirages occur due to weather conditions known as temperature reversals, where cold air is close to the sea, with warmer air above it,” Braine said. “Because cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light into the eyes of someone sitting on the ground or on the shore, changing the way a distant object appears.”
Previous “ghost ship” observations The illusion may have been involved all over the world, but the strict images captured by Morris seem to be some of the clearest examples of a superior mirage to date.
Braine said that while in this case the phenomenon made the ship appear floating above the water, “sometimes an object below the horizon can become visible,” throwing objects that would otherwise be invisible to someone’s eyes almost like a huge mirror.