Names of places in cs go mirage. Optical phenomenon mirage and its types

The article talks about what a mirage is, what causes such a phenomenon, how it can be dangerous and what types there are.

Many physical, chemical and other processes occur around us every second. True, most of them have a form that people are accustomed to and no longer pay any attention to. For example, water boiling on the stove, which turns into steam. But even if we think about more global scales, for example, about the burning of the Sun, this fact will still surprise few people. But in fact, in its depths there are amazing reactions that are so far beyond human reproduction. But such reasoning can probably only interest a person who is sincerely interested in science.

However, sometimes there are situations when the simplest and most harmless physical processes can greatly surprise, confuse, and very rarely even kill a person. Or rather, just push him to some unreasonable destructive actions. And one of these is a mirage.

Mirage... All people have probably heard this word, and it is associated primarily with hot deserts, where unfortunate travelers, seeing illusory oases, rushed to them. However, not everyone knows what causes such visions and what types there are. This is what we will talk about.

Origin of the word

It has French roots and in the original sounds like mirage, which literally means “visibility”. A mirage is one of the most common optical illusions that occurs as a result of the refraction of light rays at the boundary between layers of air that differ sharply in temperature. And sometimes, as a result of a mirage, the observer, in addition to a really existing distant object, also sees its reflection in the sky. So a mirage is a rather curious optical atmospheric phenomenon. However, for a very long time people could not understand its nature and endowed it with mystical meaning or mistook it for the machinations of evil spirits. Many legends and beliefs are associated with mirages, especially in the east.

Now let's look at the types of mirages.

Lower

This type of mirage is the most common and has been seen by many. You don't have to be in the hot desert to see it. It is characterized by the fact that as a result of a strong drop in temperature with height, above a flat surface, for example, asphalt, concrete or sand, a person observes puddles of water. And this illusion is very convincing. And for many people in ancient times, who found themselves without water in the desert, to see such a mirage was to receive an imaginary hope of salvation.

Upper

This type of mirage is usually observed in cold conditions, when the air temperature rises with increasing altitude, for example, in the polar regions on large, flat ice floes. This is quite rare in nature, and not even all eminent travelers who have visited the northern parts of our planet have seen this type of mirage. The meaning of this phenomenon is that if the bend of the sun's rays is exactly the same as the curve of the Earth's surface, then this makes it possible to see objects that are located beyond the horizon at a very large distance. There is a legend that the Vikings discovered Iceland thanks to him. So a mirage is sometimes a rather useful phenomenon. And perhaps this is the explanation for the myths about flying ships - such a mirage at sea makes them visible from the horizon and visually greatly increases both the size and speed of the ship.

Side

With side mirages everything is somewhat less exciting than with other types. They arise as a result of strong heating of vertical surfaces by the sun. For example, there is a documented fact when in the Middle Ages the wall of a fortress shone like a mirror, and outwardly it seemed that it had become partially invisible and ghostly. So now we know the meaning of the word mirage and have figured out what it is.

Volume mirage

This type is also quite rare and mainly in the mountains. During this illusion, you can see yourself or other objects relatively nearby in a distorted perspective. This phenomenon is explained by the presence of water particles in the “stagnant” mountain air.

Culture

Mirage as a phenomenon is strongly reflected in culture - films, books, legends and fairy tales. Since ancient times, many travelers or explorers have been deceived by mirages by showing water where there is none. And by the way, if you walk on a hot day on a flat surface, for example, a road, then the lower mirage will move further and further as you approach it. One can only imagine the moral torment experienced by people who were stuck in the desert without a drop of water and saw such a deceptive phenomenon.

A mirage is an illusion of water; it is this form of it that is most common both in life and in culture of various kinds. But as we see, its varieties do not end there.

Mirages as an atmospheric phenomenon in nature

Mirages (from the French “mirage”) are an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, due to which images of objects appear in the visibility zone that are under normal conditions hidden from observation. This kind of miracles happen because in an optically inhomogeneous atmosphere, rays of light are bent, as if looking beyond the horizon. Most often, inhomogeneities arise due to uneven heating of air at different altitudes. IN Ancient Egypt They believed that a mirage is a ghost of a country that no longer exists. Legend says that every place on our planet has its own soul.

More often, mirages can be observed in the desert. This can be explained by the fact that hot air acts like a mirror. For example, in the Sahara, about 160,000 mirages are observed every year; they can be stable and wandering, vertical and horizontal.

Caravans in the Erg-er-Ravi desert in North Africa are especially often victims of mirages. People see oases “with their own eyes” at a distance of 2–3 km, which are actually no less than 700 km away. A mirage can mislead even experienced people.

Thus, 360 km from the Bir-Ula oasis, a caravan led by an experienced guide from local tribes fell victim to a mirage. 60 people and 90 camels died as they followed the deceptive mirage, which carried them 60 km away from the well.

In ancient times, nomads lit a fire to make sure whether they were seeing a mirage or real objects. If there was even a slight movement of air in the desert, then the smoke spreading along the ground quickly dispersed the mirage. Maps have been compiled for many caravan routes, which indicate the places of frequently encountered mirages. These maps even indicate where wells, oases, palm groves, mountain ranges, etc. are visible.

Atmospheric mirages are divided into three classes, and the reasons that cause them are quite diverse.

Mirages of the first class are the so-called lake, or lower, mirages. They are the most common and simple. For example, water seen on desert sand or hot asphalt is a mirage of the sky above the hot sand or asphalt. Airplane landings in films or car races on television are often filmed quite close to the surface of hot asphalt. Then below the car or plane you can see their mirror image (inferior mirage), as well as the mirage of the sky.

The higher you are on land or in the sea, the less dense the air. Under normal conditions, air density decreases with increasing altitude. When light passes over the surface of the earth, the air below the light beam is denser than above. A typical property of light is that it refracts toward a denser medium, and thus a ray that travels across the surface of the earth is actually always slightly refracted downward and travels along the slightly curved surface of the earth instead of heading straight toward the sky.

The denser air seems to slow down the lower end of the beam and pull it towards itself. On the other hand, a person imagines that an object is in the direction from which the light reaches his eyes. Thus, when you look at the distant horizon, you see objects that are actually partially below the horizon. The light from these objects is refracted along the curved surface of the earth or sea and therefore it only seems that the light reaches the observer's eye from the horizon.

Many are familiar with the phrase that states that when we look at the sun as it sets, it is actually already below the horizon. In astronomy, this phenomenon is known as refraction: the refraction of light in the atmosphere raises celestial bodies on the horizon at approximately half a degree of angle.

Very often, air density does not change uniformly with altitude, and cold, denser air and warm air form layers of different temperatures at different altitudes. The movement of light in such air can be quite erratic, thus creating a distorted image of the landscape.

The inferior mirage is identical in structure: there is always only one inverted, more or less flattened mirage below the object. If the landscape itself is beautiful, then its mirage is also beautiful, and together they can spread across the horizon in a string of buildings and treetops.

If this happens in a desert, the surface of which and the adjacent layers of air are heated by the sun, the air pressure at the top can be high, the rays will begin to bend in the other direction. And then interesting phenomena will begin to occur with those rays that should have been reflected from the object and immediately hit the ground. But no, they will turn upward and, having passed perigee somewhere near the surface itself, will go into it.

Let us now imagine that such a beam, already bent, hits the pupil of a traveler walking through the desert. But to subjective perception, the object (say, a palm tree) will be located in the place where the tangent to the ray path points. Accordingly, the image of the palm tree will be reversed, as if reflected in the water. And a lot of water will spill around. Such an insidious joke will be played on the thirsty traveler by the sky moving to the sands.

French scientist Gaspard Monge, who took part in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, described his impressions of the lake mirage as follows: “When the earth’s surface is strongly heated by the Sun and is just beginning to cool before the onset of twilight, the familiar terrain no longer extends to the horizon as during the day, and it turns, as it seems, in about one league into a continuous flood.

The villages further away look like islands in a lost lake. Under each village there is an overturned image of her, only it is not sharp, small details are not visible, like a reflection in water, swayed by the wind. If you begin to approach a village that seems to be surrounded by a flood, the shore of the imaginary water moves away, the water arm that separated us from the village gradually narrows until it disappears completely, and the lake now begins behind this village, reflecting the villages located further away.

The lower mirage can be observed by anyone. If you stand on a railway track or a hill above it on a hot summer day, when the sun is slightly to the side or to the side and slightly in front of the railway track, you can see how the rails 2-3 km ahead seem to be plunging into a sparkling lake - as if the tracks were flooded. If we try to get closer to the “lake”, it will move away, and no matter how much we walk towards it, it will invariably be at the same deceptive distance.

Mirages of the second class - the rays of which bend beyond the horizon line, are called upper, or distant vision mirages. They appear right in the sky. If warm air, heated somewhere above the desert, invades the upper layers of the atmosphere, and below there is cold dense air of an anticyclone, then the rays that have undergone refraction can look very deeply beyond the horizon. Light reflected from a distant object (for example, an island) finds two paths to the observer's eyes: the first passes almost straight from the island to the observer, and the second rises slightly upward to the warm air layer, where the beam is refracted downward at a slight angle to the colder air and reaches the eye of the observer from above.

Two images of the same island are created - one normal, and the second an inverted image above the island, i.e. a superior mirage. In turn, the specific type of atmospheric phenomenon that creates such a mirage is called a thermal inversion. Then on the surface of the cold air mass lies a clearly defined, lighter and less dense layer of warm air. Severe thermal inversion also causes random interference on radios, television reception, and cell phones.

2006, May 8 - thousands of tourists and local residents observed a mirage that lasted for 4 hours in the city of Penglai near east coast China on Sunday. The fogs created an image of a city with modern high-rise buildings, wide city streets and noisy cars. It rained in Penglai for 2 days before this rare weather event occurred. Residents Cote d'Azur France on a clear morning has been seen more than once on the horizon Mediterranean Sea, where the water merges with the sky, a chain of Corsican mountains rises from the sea, about 200 km from the Cote d'Azur.

The superior mirage is described in one of the works of N.V. Gogol:

“A great miracle appeared behind Kyiv! Suddenly it became visible far to all corners of the world. In the distance the Liman turned blue, and beyond the Liman the Black Sea overflowed. Experienced people recognized both the Crimea, which rose like a mountain from the sea, and the marshy Sivash. On the right hand the land of Galicia was visible.

What is it? - the assembled people interrogated, pointing to the gray and white tops that seemed far away in the sky and looked more like clouds.

That Carpathian mountains! - the old people said.”

Lateral mirages can occur in cases where layers of air of the same density are located in the atmosphere not horizontally, as usual, but obliquely or even vertically. Similar conditions are created in the summer, in the morning shortly after sunrise on the rocky shores of the sea or lake, when the shore is already illuminated by the sun, and the surface of the water and the air above it are still cold. Lateral mirages have been repeatedly observed on Lake Geneva. For example, people saw a boat that was approaching the shore, and next to it exactly the same boat was moving away from the shore. A side mirage can appear near a stone wall of a house heated by the sun, and even on the side of a heated stove.

Thanks to a side mirage, silent, foggy ghosts appear, blocking the traveler’s path in the mountains. Usually, a frightened person sees himself. Strongly heated rocks cause such air rarefaction around them that the rays reflected from the observer and directed towards the rocks are bent near them to such an extent that, like a boomerang, they return back.

Images in side mirages are almost always equal in size to reflected objects, but they can double, triple, etc. There is a hypothesis that the famous ghosts that have taken a fancy to some castles are nothing more than a side mirage. In winter, as you know, dank, damp walls need to be intensively heated. The stones that make up the ovens are much hotter than boulders in the midday sun, and the high vaulted ceilings allow the beam to loop around and return to the observer.

Third class mirages are amazing mirages called ultra-long-range vision mirages. For them, distances of thousands of kilometers are not a hindrance. This is the case described in the book “Optical Phenomena in Nature”:

“On the night of March 27, 1898, among Pacific Ocean The crew of the Bremen ship "Matador" was frightened by the vision. Around midnight, the crew spotted a ship about two miles away that was battling a strong storm. This was all the more surprising because there was calm all around. The ship crossed the course of the Matador, and there were moments when it seemed that a collision between the ships could not be avoided...

The crew of the Matador saw how, during one strong wave impact on an unknown ship, the light in the captain’s cabin, which was visible all the time in two portholes, went out. After some time, the ship disappeared, taking with it the wind and waves. The matter was clarified later. It turned out that all this happened with another ship, which at the time of the “vision” was located at a distance of 1,700 km from the Matador.”

Third class mirages have no reliable scientific explanations. In order to somehow justify their appearance, assumptions are made that giant air lenses are formed in the atmosphere or that secondary, tertiary - multiple mirages arise, relaying the same image along a complex chain. Some are even trying to prove that there is a special “mirror” in the ionosphere, from which a solar ray, like a radio signal, is reflected and, simultaneously self-focusing, is carried away to another part of the world.

An interesting version is expressed by Victor Loisha: “Why not admit that under some very successful coincidences of many physical circumstances, natural superconducting light guides, linearly oriented channels of anomalous ionization, through which beams of light are transmitted over very long distances, can be formed in the air - so, that the sunrise over Japan suddenly becomes visible, say, on the Azores Islands...”

Fata Morgana is a complex optical phenomenon in the atmosphere that consists of several forms of mirages, in which distant objects are visible repeatedly and with various distortions. Fata Morgana occurs when several alternating layers of air of different densities are formed in the lower layers of the atmosphere, capable of producing mirror reflections.

As a result of reflection, as well as refraction of rays, real-life objects produce several distorted images on the horizon or above it, partially overlapping each other and quickly changing in time, which creates a bizarre picture of this complex mirage. This phenomenon was named in honor of the heroine of legends - Fata Morgana. They say that she was a half-sister, but after the knight Lancelot rejected her love, out of grief she settled at the bottom of the sea, in a crystal palace, and from that time on she has been deceiving sailors with ghostly visions.

So, in the 1920s, a large ocean liner I was on my next flight from Europe to the USA. And suddenly, not far from the Azores Islands, everyone who was on deck clearly saw "". The thought of a scary ghost ship flashed through the minds of many passengers and sailors. And the unprecedented ship threatened to crash into the steamer. At the very last moment, the captain, in a loud, broken voice, ordered the ship to change course. Heeling to starboard, the sailboat rushed past. And at that time, the frightened, amazed passengers saw something even more amazing: people in ancient costumes were rushing around the deck of the sailing ship.

They raised their hands up and silently shouted something, as if they were trying to warn about something. It is clear that the passengers spent the rest of the voyage in fear of imminent death. After all, according to maritime legend, meeting a ghost ship does not bode well. When the ship arrived at the port, the story of the Flying Dutchman received wide publicity. But later it turned out that the ocean liner encountered a mirage of a sailing ship, intended for filming a historical film and located in a completely different place.

Anyone who spends a lot of time in polar waters will certainly see mirages. For example, experienced Finnish sailors and fairway experts are well aware that there are conditions in which it is unusually difficult to find a familiar route among the confusing mirages on a rocky coastline. In Finland, conditions for mirages are especially favorable in the spring, when the sea ice melts. A water temperature of 0 °C with a spring wave of warm air at a temperature of 15 °C can create incredible mirages in the sky.

Another example of an amazing atmospheric phenomenon took place in the Algerian desert, which was crossed by a French colonial detachment. Ahead, about six kilometers from him, a flock of flamingos walked in single file. But when the birds crossed the border of the mirage, their legs stretched out and doubled, instead of two, each had 4. For better or worse - an Arab horseman in a white robe. The detachment commander, alarmed, sent a scout to check what kind of people were in the desert. But when the soldier entered the zone of curvature of the sun's rays, he himself turned into a ghost mirage, and his horse's legs became so long that it seemed as if he was sitting on a mythical monster.

One person in 1852 saw the Strasbourg Bell Tower in the sky, and the image was gigantic, as if the bell tower appeared before him enlarged 20 times. In 1902, Robert Wood, an American scientist who not without reason earned the nickname “the wizard of the physics laboratory,” photographed two boys peacefully wandering through the waters of the Chesapeake Bay between yachts. Moreover, the height of the boys in the picture was more than 3 meters.

This kind of mirage deception can also be explained by the deviation of light from a rectilinear progression, in which the object is seen in the wrong direction or is distorted. Ghost mirages are usually visible on the horizon. The angle of mirages is very low, but their shapes can be very different. Bushes and stones on small island can be perceived as towers in the sky; the low rocky shores are stretched vertically, and they resemble abysses; the ship and its deck superstructures can warp into unidentifiable square shapes, and the islands themselves appear to spin in the air.

E. Gurnakova

The ancient Egyptians believed that a mirage was the ghost of a country that no longer exists. Legend says that every place on Earth has its own soul. Mirages observed in deserts are explained by the fact that hot air acts like a mirror. This phenomenon is quite common - for example, about 160 thousand mirages are observed annually in the Sahara: they can be stable and wandering, vertical and horizontal.

On May 8, 2006, thousands of tourists and local residents observed a mirage that lasted for four hours in Penglai off the east coast of China on Sunday. 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 event occurred.

It is almost impossible to study mirages, since they do not appear on order and are always original and unpredictable. According to scientists, the atmosphere is like a layered, airy cake, which consists of layers with different temperatures. And the greater the temperature difference, the more the path of the light beam is bent. In this case, it is as if a giant airy lens is formed, which moves all the time. In addition, the observed object and the person himself are inside this air lens. Therefore, the observer sees the image distorted. The more complex the shape of the atmospheric lenses, the more bizarre the mirage.

Atmospheric mirages divided into three classes: lower or lake; upper(they appear directly in the sky) or distant vision mirages; lateral mirages.
A more complex type of mirage is called " Fata Morgana". No explanation has yet been found for it. The aurora borealis, werewolf mirages, and the “Flying Dutchmen” are usually classified as types of mirages.

Lower (lake) mirage

Inferior mirages are quite common. For example, water seen on desert sand or hot asphalt is a mirage of the sky above the hot sand or asphalt. Airplane landings in movies or car races on television are often filmed very close to the surface of hot asphalt. Then below the car or plane you can see their mirror image (inferior mirage), as well as the mirage of the sky. By the same principle, if you look at an object, for example, along a wall heated by the sun, then you can almost always see a mirage of the object next to the wall.

If on a hot summer day you stand on the railway track or a hill above it, when the sun is slightly to the side or to the side and slightly in front of the railway track, then you can see how the rails two or three kilometers away from us seem to be plunging into a sparkling lake, as if the tracks were flooded flood. Let's try to get closer to the "lake" - it will move away, and no matter how much we walk towards it, it will invariably be 2-3 kilometers away from us.

Such “lake” mirages drove desert travelers, languishing from heat and thirst, to despair. They also saw the coveted water 2-3 kilometers away, they wandered towards it with all their strength, but the water receded and then seemed to dissolve in the air.

In the photo, the sailboat almost disappears into the lower mirage. Only the sail is visible.

Lighthouse Isokari

The lower mirage and the ship's mirage.

Superior mirages (distance vision mirages)

This type of mirages is no more complex in origin than “lake” ones, but more diverse. They are usually called "distant vision mirages".

On a clear morning, residents of the Côte d'Azur of France have seen more than once how, on the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea, where the water merges with the sky, the chain of Corsican mountains rises from the sea, about two hundred kilometers from the Côte d'Azur.

In the same case, if this happens in the desert itself, the surface of which and the adjacent layers of air are heated by the sun, the air pressure at the top may turn out to be high, the rays will begin to bend in the other direction. And then curious phenomena will occur with those rays that, having reflected from the object, should have immediately buried themselves in the ground. But no, they will turn upward and, having passed perigee somewhere near the surface itself, will go into it.

A typical example is given in Aristotle's Meteorology: residents of Syracuse sometimes saw the coast of continental Italy for several hours, although it was 150 km away. Such phenomena are also caused by the redistribution of warm and cold layers of air. in the direction of the last segment of the path of the light beam.

Boat against a background with a typical superior mirage

On April 20, 1999, an ordinary charterer was practicing in the waters of the southwestern archipelago of Finland.
The vessel took many different forms; sometimes it seemed there were 2 ships, one of which was upside down.

Superior mirage and sailboat.

House on the archipelago with the upper mirage

Side mirages

This type of mirage can occur in cases where layers of air of the same density are located in the atmosphere not horizontally, as usual, but obliquely or even vertically. Such conditions are created in the summer, in the morning shortly after sunrise, on the rocky shores of the sea or lake, when the shore is already illuminated by the Sun, and the surface of the water and the air above it are still cold. Lateral mirages have been repeatedly observed on Lake Geneva. We saw a boat approaching the shore, and next to it exactly the same boat was moving away from the shore. A side mirage can appear near a stone wall of a house heated by the Sun, and even on the side of a heated stove.

Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana is a complex optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, consisting of several forms of mirages, in which distant objects are visible repeatedly and with various distortions. Fata Morgana occurs when several alternating layers of air of varying densities are formed in the lower layers of the atmosphere, capable of producing specular reflections. As a result of reflection, as well as refraction of rays, real-life objects produce several distorted images on the horizon or above it, partially overlapping each other and quickly changing in time, which creates a bizarre picture of Fata Morgana.

The mirage received its name in honor of the fairy-tale heroine Fata Morgana or, translated from Italian, the fairy Morgana. They say that she is the half-sister of King Arthur, the rejected lover of Lancelot, who settled out of grief at the bottom of the sea, in a crystal palace, and since then has been deceiving sailors with ghostly visions.

On April 3, 1900, the defenders of the fortress of Bloemfontein, in England, saw the battle formations of the British army in the sky, and so clearly that they could distinguish the buttons on the red uniforms of the officers. This was taken as a bad omen. Two days later the fortress surrendered.

In 1902, Robert Wood, an American scientist who not without reason earned the nickname “the wizard of the physics laboratory,” photographed two boys peacefully wandering through the waters of the Chesapeake Bay between yachts. Moreover, the height of the boys in the photograph exceeded 3 meters.

One man in 1852, from a distance of 4 km, saw the Strasbourg Bell Tower at a distance, as it seemed to him, of two kilometers. The image was gigantic, as if the bell tower appeared before him enlarged 20 times.

TO Fata Morgana can be attributed to numerous " flying dutchmen ", which are still seen by sailors.

At 11 a.m. on December 10, 1941, the team of the British transport Vendor, located in the area Maldives, noticed a burning ship on the horizon. "Vendor" went to the rescue of those in distress, but an hour later the burning ship fell on its side and sank. "Vendor" approached the supposed place of the ship's death, but, despite a thorough search, did not find not only any debris, but even stains of fuel oil. At the port of destination, in India, the commander of the Vendor learned that at the very moment when his team observed the tragedy, a cruiser was sinking, attacked by Japanese torpedo bombers near Ceylon. The distance between the ships at that time was 900 km.

Mirage ghosts

The detachment commander, alarmed, sent a scout to check what kind of people were in the desert. When the soldier himself entered the zone of curvature of the sun's rays, he, of course, figured out who he was dealing with. But he also struck fear into his comrades - the legs of his horse became so long that it seemed that he was sitting on a fantastic monster.

Other visions still baffle us today. The Swedish polar explorer Nordenskiöld has repeatedly observed in the Arctic werewolf mirages:

"One day, a bear, whose approach was expected and which everyone clearly saw, instead of approaching with his usual soft gait, zigzags and sniffing the air, wondering whether foreigners were suitable for him as food, just at the moment of the sniper's sight... spread gigantic wings and flew away in the form of a small green seagull. Another time, during the same sleigh ride, the hunters, being in a tent pitched for rest, heard the cry of a cook fiddling around it: “Bear, A big bear! No, it’s a deer, a very small deer.” At the same moment, a shot rang out from the tent, and the killed “bear-deer” turned out to be a small arctic fox, who paid with his life for the honor of pretending to be a large animal for a few moments".

It is also reliably known about mirages-ghosts. This is how British meteorologist Caroline Botley describes this effect.

Mirages lead to victims, but the physical explanation of the phenomenon of mirages does not in the least alleviate the fate of travelers misled by the ephemeral oasis. In order to protect people brought into the desert from the risk of getting lost and dying of thirst, special maps are drawn up marking the places where mirages are usually observed. These guides indicate where wells can be seen, and where palm groves and even mountain ranges can be seen.

Caravans in the Erg-er-Ravi desert in North Africa are especially often victims of mirages. People see oases “with their own eyes” at a distance of 2-3 kilometers, which are actually at least 700 kilometers.

Classification

Mirages are divided into lower ones, visible under the object, upper ones, above the object, and side ones.

Inferior Mirage

It is observed with a very large vertical temperature gradient (it decreases with height) over an overheated flat surface, often a desert or an asphalt road. The virtual image of the sky creates the illusion of water on the surface. So, the road stretching into the distance on a hot summer day seems wet.

Superior Mirage

Observed over the cold earth's surface with an inverted temperature distribution (air temperature increases with increasing altitude).

Superior mirages are generally less common than inferior mirages, but are often more stable because cold air does not tend to move upward and warm air downward.

Superficial mirages are most common in polar regions, especially on large, flat ice floes with stable low temperatures. They are also observed at more temperate latitudes, although in these cases they are weaker, less clear and stable. The superior mirage can be upright or inverted, depending on the distance to the true object and the temperature gradient. Often the image looks like a fragmented mosaic of straight and inverted parts.

A normal-sized ship is moving over the horizon. Given a specific state of the atmosphere, its reflection above the horizon appears gigantic.

Superior mirages can have a striking effect due to the curvature of the Earth. If the curvature of the rays is approximately the same as the curvature of the Earth, the light rays can travel great distances, causing the observer to see objects far beyond the horizon. This was observed and documented for the first time in 1596, when a ship under the command of Willem Barentsz, searching for the Northeast Passage, became stuck in the ice on Novaya Zemlya. The crew was forced to wait out the polar night. Moreover, the sunrise after the polar night was observed two weeks earlier than expected. In the 20th century, this phenomenon was explained and called the "New Earth Effect".

In the same way, ships that are actually so far away that they should not be visible above the horizon can appear on the horizon, and even above the horizon, as superior mirages. This may explain some stories of ships or coastal cities flying in the sky, as described by some polar explorers.

Side mirage

The existence of a side mirage is usually not even suspected. This is a reflection from a heated vertical wall.

Such a case is described by one French author. Approaching the fort of the fortress, he noticed that the smooth concrete wall of the fort suddenly shone like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding landscape, soil, and sky. Taking a few more steps, he noticed the same change with the other wall of the fort. It seemed as if the gray, uneven surface was suddenly replaced by a polished one. It was a hot day, and the walls must have become very hot, which was the key to their specularity. It turned out that a mirage is observed whenever the wall is sufficiently heated by the sun's rays. We even managed to photograph this phenomenon.

On hot summer days, one should pay attention to the heated walls of large buildings and look for signs of mirage. Without a doubt, with some attention, the number of observed cases of lateral mirage should become more frequent.

Fata Morgana

Complex mirage phenomena with a sharp distortion of the appearance of objects are called Fata Morgana.

Volume mirage

In the mountains, it is very rare, under certain conditions, to see the “distorted self” at a fairly close distance. This phenomenon is explained by the presence of “standing” water vapor in the air.

Notes

Links

// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional ones). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

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Synonyms:

See what "Mirage" is in other dictionaries:

- (in Italy Fata Morgana, in Russia haze) an optical phenomenon consisting in the fact that objects located outside the horizon become visible, and those located within it appear enlarged or doubled. It is observed in hot and cold... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Cm … Synonym dictionary

MIRAGE, mirage, husband. (French mirage). 1. Optical phenomenon in a clear, calm atmosphere with different heating levels of its individual layers, consisting in the fact that invisible objects located beyond the horizon are reflected in a refracted form in the air.... ... Dictionary Ushakova

- (French mirage), an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere in which, in addition to (or instead of) objects in their true position, their imaginary images are also visible. Mirage is explained by the bending of light rays coming from an object in unequally heated and... ... Modern encyclopedia

Fata Morgana, Looming, is an optical phenomenon in which objects located beyond the horizon become visible. M. is explained by the uneven heating of layers of air, as a result of which rays from objects when moving from one ... ... Marine Dictionary

Mirage F1 Purpose: fighter-bomber First flight: December 23, 1966 ... Wikipedia

The word mirage comes from the French mirage, which has two similar meanings.

1. An optical phenomenon, usually observed in deserts, consisting in the fact that in addition to objects in their true position, their imaginary images are visible; with a mirage, objects hidden behind the horizon become visible; may be the result of bending light rays in unevenly heated layers of air;

2. Deceptive vision; something apparent, ghostly.

As is known, light propagates in a straight line only in a homogeneous medium. At the boundary of two media, the light beam is refracted, that is, it deviates slightly from the original path. Such a heterogeneous medium is, in particular, the air of the earth’s atmosphere: its density increases with earth's surface. The beam of light is bent, and as a result, the luminaries appear somewhat shifted, “raised” relative to their true positions in the sky. This phenomenon is called refraction (from the Latin refractus - “refracted”). Due to refraction, virtual images of individual objects - mirages - can appear in the atmosphere.

People have seen mirages since ancient times, about which many legends have been preserved. Particularly colorful stories about the mirages of Palestine were left by the crusaders, whom, however, no one particularly believed. The knights really loved to lie about the wonders of the East. :))) The ancient Egyptians believed that a mirage was a ghost of a country that no longer exists in the world. A beautiful belief said that every place on Earth has its own soul. Centuries passed, and the fairy tale lost its former meaning, turning into a natural phenomenon, about which everything is known and nothing at the same time.

On the one hand, it is difficult to find a person who, at least once in his life, has not seen the simplest mirage - a blue lake on a hot highway. Opticians will explain this phenomenon clearly, with drawings and formulas. On the other hand, thousands of people have observed literally hanging cities, quaint castles and even entire armies in the sky, but here experts have no explanation for this natural phenomenon. It is almost impossible to study mirages, because they do not appear by order. Their owner, Fata Morgana, is always original and unpredictable.

Mirages come, relatively speaking, of three types. Conditionally - because these atmospheric phenomena are very diverse in their form and in the reasons that cause them.

Atmospheric mirages are divided into three classes: lake, or lower; upper (they appear directly in the sky) or distant vision mirages; lateral mirages.

A more complex type of mirage is called Fata Morgana. The types of mirages usually include mirages - werewolves, ghost mirages, "Flying Dutchmen".

Lower (lake) mirage

Inferior mirages occur primarily in cases where the layers of air near the surface of the Earth (for example, in a desert) are so heated that the rays of light emanating from objects are strongly bent. Having described an arc at the surface, they go from bottom to top. Then you can suddenly see trees and houses, as if reflected in the water. In fact, these are inverted images of distant landscapes.

The French scientist Gaspard Monge, who took part in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, describes his impressions of the lake mirage as follows:
“When the surface of the earth is strongly heated by the Sun and is just beginning to cool before the onset of twilight, the familiar terrain no longer extends to the horizon as during the day, but turns, as it seems, at about one league into a continuous flood. The villages located further away look as if islands in the middle of a lost lake. Under each village there is an overturned image of it, only it is not sharp, small details are not visible, like a reflection in the water, shaken by the wind. If you begin to approach a village, which seems to be surrounded by a flood, the shore of the imaginary water keeps moving away, a water arm, separating us from the village, gradually narrows until it disappears completely, and the lake now begins behind this village, reflecting the villages located further."

The nature of the lake mirage has been studied in detail. The sun's rays heat the soil, which heats the lower layer of air. It, in turn, rushes upward, immediately being replaced by a new one, which heats up and flows upward. Light rays always bend from warm layers towards cooler ones. In physics, this phenomenon is called refraction and has been known since the time of Ptolemy. Rays from the bright sky near the horizon, heading towards the earth, bend upward above it and reach our eye at an angle from below, as if reflected from something above the earth itself. We see, of course, a piece of blue sky, only below where it actually is. And the effect of shine and shimmer is caused by the heterogeneity of the flow of warm air rising from the hot surface.

Mirages lead to victims. The physical explanation of the phenomenon of mirages does not in the least alleviate the fate of travelers misled by the ephemeral oasis. In order to protect people brought into the desert from the risk of getting lost and dying of thirst, special maps are drawn up marking the places where mirages are usually observed. These guides indicate where wells can be seen, and where palm groves and even mountain ranges can be seen.

Caravans in the Erg-er-Ravi desert in North Africa are especially often victims of mirages. People see oases “with their own eyes” at a distance of 2-3 kilometers, which in reality are at least 700 kilometers away! Thus, 360 kilometers from the Bir-Ula oasis, a caravan led by an experienced guide fell victim to a mirage. 60 people and 90 camels died as they followed the mirage, which carried them 60 kilometers away from the well.

Superior mirage (distance vision mirage)

This type of mirages is no more complex in origin than “lake” ones, but more diverse. They are usually called "distant vision mirages."

The air is heated from the Earth's surface, and its temperature drops with height. However, if above the layer of cool air there is a warmer (brought, for example, by southern winds) and very rarefied air layer, and the transition between them is quite sharp, then the refraction increases significantly. Rays of light coming from objects on Earth describe something like an arc and return down, sometimes tens, even hundreds of kilometers from their source. Then a “raising of the horizon” or superior mirage is observed.

In Aristotle's Meteorology, a typical example is given of how residents of Syracuse sometimes saw the coast of continental Italy for several hours, although it was 150 km away. Such phenomena are also caused by the redistribution of warm and cold layers of air. in the direction of the last segment of the path of the light beam.

Side mirages

Lateral mirages have been repeatedly observed on Lake Geneva. We saw a boat approaching the shore, and next to it exactly the same boat was moving away from the shore. A side mirage can appear near a stone wall of a house heated by the Sun, and even on the side of a heated stove. And the Dutch astronomer and popularizer of science Marcel Minnaert proposed this optical trick: “Stand at long wall(at least 10 m) at arm's length and look at the shiny metal object that your friend is gradually bringing closer to the wall at the other end. When the object is a few centimeters away from the wall, its contours will be distorted, and you will see its reflection on the wall, as if it were a mirror. On a very hot day there may even be two images."

The nature of this mirage is exactly the same as that of the lake. Of course, the rays of light are reflected not from the wall, but from the hotter layer of air adjacent to it.

Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana is a complex optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, consisting of several forms of mirages, in which distant objects are visible repeatedly and with various distortions. No convincing explanation has yet been found for this most mysterious type of mirage. But, there are many theories. And we will present one of them here.

If, for example, we follow the Fraser-Mach theory, then for Fata Morgana to occur it is necessary that the dependence of air temperature on altitude be nonlinear. At first, the temperature increases with altitude, but from a certain level the rate of its increase decreases. Scientists call a similar temperature profile, only with a steeper “turn,” an air lens. Meteorologists have substantiated the existence of such an effect, but it is too early to say that it is the cause of Fata Morgana.

Mirages got their name in honor of the fairy-tale heroine Fata Morgana or, translated from Italian, fairy Morgana. They say that she is the half-sister of King Arthur, the rejected lover of Lancelot, who settled out of grief at the bottom of the sea, in a crystal palace, and since then has been deceiving sailors with ghostly visions.

In March 1898, at night, the crew of the Bremen ship "Matador" while crossing southern part I saw a strange haze from the Pacific Ocean. All this happened on the seventh bell of the night, in other words, half an hour before midnight. A ship appeared on the leeward side, fighting the storm. It was very strange, because around the Matador the water was completely calm. But the sailboat seen from the Matador was flooded by furious waves, rolling over it. The captain of the "Matador" Gerkins, despite the complete calm, ordered all the sails to be reefed, fearing that the unknown sailing ship would bring the wind with it... Meanwhile, the sailing ship approached. The waves carried him straight towards the Matador. And suddenly the ship flew away south direction, carrying with it a mysterious storm, and from the deck of the Matador one could see how the bright light in the captain's cabin suddenly went out. Later they learned that on the same night and at the same time, one Danish ship actually got into a storm, and a lamp exploded in its captain's cabin. When the time and degrees of longitude of the two ships were compared, it turned out that the distance between the Matador and the other Danish ship at the time the mirage appeared was about 1,700 km.

Fata Morgana is a complex mirage. For such a mirage to occur, the dependence of temperature on altitude must be nonlinear; the temperature initially increases with altitude, but from a certain level the rate of its growth decreases. A similar temperature profile, only with a steeper break somewhere in the middle, can create a triple-image mirage.

"Flying Dutchman"

Since ancient times, there has been a legend about a ghost ship - the Flying Dutchman. Its captain was convicted of blasphemy to forever rush through the seas and oceans without dropping anchor anywhere. The meeting with this terrible sailing ship, according to the sailors, foreshadowed a shipwreck.

Many said that they saw this ship with their own eyes. Moreover, all the stories were similar: the Flying Dutchman suddenly appeared in front of the ships, completely silent, sailed straight towards them, not responding to signals, and then just as suddenly disappeared into the fog.

This old legend probably gave rise to the upper mirages. Sailors saw reflections of distant ships that were not visible under normal conditions, each time mistaking them for a mystical sailboat.

At 11 a.m. on December 10, 1941, the crew of the British transport Vendor, located in the Maldives, noticed a burning ship on the horizon. "Vendor" went to the rescue of those in distress, but an hour later the burning ship fell on its side and sank. "Vendor" approached the supposed place of the ship's death, but, despite a thorough search, did not find not only any debris, but even stains of fuel oil. At the port of destination, in India, the commander of the Vendor learned that at the very moment when his team observed the tragedy, a cruiser was sinking, attacked by Japanese torpedo bombers near Ceylon. The distance between the ships at that time was 900 km.

So, if you believe this message, sometimes you can see what is hidden beyond the distant horizon. But how is this possible?

How does light travel? A spoon in a glass of tea seems broken to us. Why? The reason is the different densities of water and air. Passing from one medium to another - from less dense air to more dense water, rays of light are refracted, change their straight path, and deviate towards a denser medium. This is a law of physics.

In the air, light rays are also not straight. When a ray of light from an air layer of one density enters a layer of another density, it is deflected. Most often, the refraction of light rays in the air is insignificant, the images of visible objects are not shifted or noticeably distorted. But it also happens differently.

This is what a ship captain once observed near the North Pole. The ship sailed among ice hummocks and fragments of ice fields, sparkling in the rays of the blinding sun. Suddenly objects in the distance rose up and hung in the air. Huge ice mountains, snow fields with ice hummocks, and a wavy coast with hills appeared before the astonished sailors. An even more amazing picture was observed in 1878 by American soldiers from Fort Abraham Lincoln. Half an hour before this mirage, a detachment came out of the fort, and then they were seen marching across the sky! They started talking about the fact that the detachment had died, these were the souls of the soldiers. Mystic? No!

Under certain circumstances, “atmospheric mirrors” are formed in the air. One of the air layers acquires the ability to reflect light rays. This happens early in the morning, when the lower layers of air are still very cool from contact with the ground, and the upper layers are warmer. At the same time, one of upper layers air begins to reflect from itself, like a mirror, everything that is on the earth's surface. In such conditions, you can also see what is beyond the horizon. Distant islands, mountains, and sailing ships appear in the air. So one traveler saw on the seashore in Italy an inverted image of an entire city hanging in the air. Houses, towers, and streets were clearly visible. Amazed, he hastened to sketch what he saw, and then, after walking several kilometers, he came to the very city whose image he had seen in the air earlier.

An example closer to us: forty kilometers from St. Petersburg, on the shore Gulf of Finland, the city of Lomonosov is located. St. Petersburg is usually very poorly visible from here. However, there are days when city residents see it clearly. His image appears in the air. Then from Lomonosov you can clearly see the reflection of the Neva River, bridges, and tall buildings.

Mirages werewolves

A French colonial detachment was crossing the Algerian desert. Ahead, about six kilometers from him, a flock of flamingos walked in single file. But when the birds crossed the border of the mirage, their legs stretched out and separated, instead of two, each had four. Neither give nor take - an Arab horseman in a white robe. The detachment commander, alarmed, sent a scout to check what kind of people were in the desert. When the soldier himself entered the zone of curvature of the sun's rays, he, of course, figured out who he was dealing with. But... he brought fear to his comrades! His horse's legs became so long that he seemed to be sitting on a fantastic monster.

Other visions still baffle us today. Let’s open, for example, the book “Mirages of the Arctic.” It describes a lot of mysterious things and, in particular, werewolf mirages observed by the Swedish polar explorer Nordenskiöld: “One day a bear, whose approach was expected and which everyone clearly saw, instead of approaching with its usual soft gait, zigzag and sniffing the air, wondering if the strangers were good enough for him to eat, just at the moment of the sniper's sight... he spread his gigantic wings and flew away in the form of a small green seagull. Another time, during the same sleigh ride, the hunters, being in a tent pitched for rest, we heard the cry of the cook fiddling around it: “Bear, big bear! No - a deer, a very small deer." At the same moment, a shot was heard from the tent, and the killed "bear-deer" turned out to be a small arctic fox, who paid with his life for the honor of pretending to be a large animal for a few moments."

Mirage ghosts

It is also reliably known about ghost mirages. This is how British meteorologist Caroline Botley describes this effect: “On a hot August day in 1962, I was picking flowers. Suddenly, a few meters away from me, I saw a figure, it was trembling and swaying, it was quite massive. I dropped the bouquet of flowers in horror and only then noticed that that the ghost also had a bouquet of flowers and he also dropped it. It was my own reflection. I distinguished all the shades, details, body color in such detail, as if I saw myself in the mirror."

Despite the fact that Miss Botley is known throughout America as a weather expert, one would think that this time we are definitely talking about a hallucination. But in 1965, an American tourist photographed a similar ghost. Since then, a dozen photographs of ghost mirages and even one amateur video have appeared. Such phenomena usually occur in the morning, on a hot day, when steam is still rising from the ground. Scientists believe that ghosts are caused not by the refraction of light, but by reflection on the rare fog. But scientists cannot yet speak confidently about the “mechanisms” that create mirages and ghosts. There are more guesses than informed theories...

Interesting cases of observing mirages

At the end, we would like to cite a few more interesting mirages. We tried to arrange them in chronological order.

The scientist K. Flammarion in his book “Atmosphere” provides evidence from the inhabitants of a Belgian city. Citizens of Verviers (name of the city) on July 18, 1815, the day of the Battle of Waterloo (then Napoleon was defeated) saw armed men in the sky. It was even noticeable that one cannon had a broken wheel! And this despite the fact that the battle took place 105 kilometers from Verviers.

In the ancient book "Daily Notes on the Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishing, Containing Research and Findings on the East Coast of Greenland." it speaks of a large city, which was observed in the summer of 1820 by the commander of the ship "Baffin", full of castles and temples, very similar to ancient buildings. The sailor sketched this miraculous phenomenon in detail, but the evidence later, of course, was not confirmed.

Later, in 1840, residents of a small island north of England saw beautiful white buildings in the sky. Since there was nothing like this in their homeland, people considered this to be a confirmation of the fairy tale about the Finn people who lived in the crystal city. The vision of a distant country was repeated 17 years later and hung in the air for three hours.

And on April 3, 1900, the defenders of the Bloemfontein fortress, in England, saw the battle formations of the British army in the sky, and so clearly that they could distinguish the buttons on the red uniforms of the officers. This was taken as a bad omen. Two days later, the capital of the Orange Republic surrendered.

One of best places The best place in the world to study mirages is Alaska. The appearance of mirages in these parts began to be constantly recorded only in the 19th century. There is even a special society created here for the study of natural optical phenomena, which publishes a journal for observing mirages, and tourists from Canada and the USA are taken by bus to admire the peaks of gigantic mountains that appear straight from the abyss, which then dissolve.

In Alaska, the more severe the cold, the more clearly and beautifully the souls of cities, mountains and various objects appear in the heavens. So, in 1889 local, while walking near Mount Fairweather, in the southeast of the peninsula, I observed a silhouette big city- with skyscrapers, high towers and spiers, temples similar to mosques. The source of the mirage could be thousands of kilometers from Alaska.

Something similar was recently observed by thousands of tourists off the east coast of China in the city of Penglai, Shandong Province. The mists have built a city with modern high-rise buildings, wide city streets filled with people and fast cars. The mirage of high clarity was pleasing to the eye for four hours, and it appeared after the city suffered heavy rains for two days.

Experts in this field say that in the city of Penglai, located on the coast of the Shandong Peninsula, a fairly large number of mirages were recorded throughout its existence, which made the city famous as the home of the gods.

Mirages have been recorded not only over the surface of the earth, but also over the surface of the oceans. Charles Lindbergh, a famous American aviator, made the first ever flight across the Atlantic Ocean. According to the pilot, two hundred miles from Ireland he saw land: hills and trees. The vision did not disappear for several minutes.

Images of mirages were observed not only from airplanes, but even from space! Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Grechko photographed an ice floe hanging in the air above the clouds from the Salyut spacecraft.

Mirages at our latitude are akin to anomalies, they are so a rare event. But if the summer is hot, the wind has definitely died, then this natural phenomenon can visit our sky.

The sultry July was a match for the Goodwill Games. On the beach in Komarov, everyone was sitting in the water, not on the shore. Somewhere at the beginning of the fourth, a one and a half meter gray, slightly blurry circle formed over the coastal part of the bay, not very high in the blue sky. The vacationers froze: what is this? In the circle, as in a lens, the domes of the distant St. Isaac's Cathedral. Under the large circle shone a smaller one, only upside down, from which rainbow rays emanated. Then the whole picture began to shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow and melted.

That same summer, the mirage was observed by the entire Komarov family from the attic of a country house in the village of Vaskelovo. The stuffy evening did not bring relief, and so they decided to go to bed with the whole family in the hayloft. The windows and doors of the attic were wide open, and the entire horizon was clearly visible in the blue haze. In the west, the horizon suddenly began to turn unusually blue, and soon a clear blue stripe formed above the tops of the trees, and a blue village appeared a little higher above it. With blue two-story houses, streets, a small lake with bushes and trees hanging over it. The picture was by no means frozen - cars drove along the streets and people walked leisurely.

The previous summer was also not without mirages. Galina Sergeevna I. and Anna Ivanovna F. watched almost mystical mirage from the windows of his house from the seventh floor. Galina Sergeevna's house is located on Composer Street, and the windows face Pargolov. The ladies drank tea and listened to Tchaikovsky's music. The owner of the apartment was the first to draw attention to the horizon. A light golden cloud appeared there. Then it was replaced by a gray stripe, above which appeared... crosses and tombstones. Later, a long alley with fir trees, crosses and a gray crypt became green. Fortunately for the observers, the picture was blurry and short-lived, lasting for about a minute, after which it quickly disappeared. The gray, dilapidated crypt lingered in the sky the longest. Both ladies did not at all fall into mysticism and did not ask heaven for mercy. But I still didn’t want to listen to Tchaikovsky’s music.

Names of places in cs go mirage. Optical phenomenon mirage and its types

Origin of the word

Lower

Upper

Side

Volume mirage

Culture

Mirages as an atmospheric phenomenon in nature

Classification

Inferior Mirage

Superior Mirage

Side mirage

Fata Morgana

Volume mirage

Notes

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