The cover photo of the floating ship has caught everyone’s attention as this huge cargo ship appears to simply hover above the water. What you’re seeing is not just a mirage, but a superior mirage.
We’re all familiar with an inferior mirage that creates the appearance of an oasis in the desert. Both inferior and superior mirages involve air temperatures and refracted (i.e. bent) sunlight.
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The inferior mirage occurs when very hot air is at the surface with colder air above it. The sun’s rays get bent by 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 “water” that appears to be on the hot road down the way, but actually isn’t -- it’s just the sky above.
You’d think around here with our hot pavement, we’d see a LOT of these in the summer!
So what is a superior mirage?
A superior mirage occurs when rather than having hotter air at the surface, there is colder air at the surface and warm air above that. The light is bent upward instead of downward, so the mirage occurs above the ground rather than at the surface:
If the object of a superior mirage is within your line of sight, or on/above the horizon, that object will look upside down.
However, if the object is below the horizon, then it will appear in an upright position. This is called a “looming” mirage:
To get such a great photo is actually rarer than mirages themselves. In fact, the sun itself causes a mirage each day at sunset and sunrise -- when you see the full sun sitting on the horizon, all or part of it is actually below the horizon. The light bends in such a way through the atmosphere to make the sun appear full. You can explore that phenomenon more right here.
Have a great week. We have some warm changes the next several days!
Frank