What you need to know about this “approaching” ship

The deck photo of the floating ship caught everyone’s attention, as this huge cargo ship seems to float above the water. What you see is not just a mirage, but a superior mirage.

We are all familiar with an inferior mirage that creates the appearance of an oasis in the desert. Both lower and upper mirages involve air temperatures and refracted (ie bent) sunlight.

The lower mirage occurs when very hot air is on the surface, with colder air above it. The sun’s rays bend over that warmer air and your eye “sees” an apparent image, which is really just a reflection of the sky above.

Here’s a photo showing the “water” that seems to be on the hot road, but it’s not really – it’s just the sky above.

You would think here with our hot pavement, we would see a lot of them in the summer!

A superior mirage occurs when, rather than having hotter air on the surface, there is colder air on the surface and warm air above. The light is bent upwards instead of downwards, so that the mirage takes place above the ground, rather than on the surface:

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If the object of a higher mirage is in your line of sight or on / above the horizon, that object will show upside down.

However, if the object is below the horizon, then it will appear in an upright position. This is called an “approaching” mirage:

Getting such a great photo is actually rarer than the mirages themselves. In fact, the sun itself causes a mirage every day at sunset and sunrise – when you see the full sun on the horizon, all or part of it is actually below the horizon. The light bends in this way through the atmosphere to make the sun look full. You can explore this phenomenon more right here.

Have a great week. We have some warm changes in the next few days!

Sincere

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