What really is a mirage, and is it possible to photograph it

Mirages have been known since antiquity, and most often these phenomena were observed by travelers crossing the hot, waterless deserts. Tired of the heavy road and exhausted by thirst, people saw a strip of water in the distance and walked towards it, not realizing that it was not really water, but a mirage. Over time, this word has become synonymous with something non-existent, slipping away, dissolving in space. In fact, this is not the fruit of the sick imagination of tormented travelers, but an atmospheric phenomenon that actually exists.

A mirage is an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere that occurs due to the temperature difference between the layers of the air and the refraction of the sun's rays. There are several forms of mirages, each of which is interesting in its own way.

The most common are the lower mirages. It was they who drove the thirsty travelers crazy. Lower mirages occur where the surface of the earth is very overheated, for example, in the same desert or over an asphalt road. The lower layers of atmospheric air also heat up from this hot surface, and a sharp temperature difference occurs between the lower layers of the air and the upper. As a result of this, refraction of light flows occurs: the beam deviates from the hot layer to the colder upper layer, and then back from the next layer down. As a result of these refractions, we see a reflection of the sky in the atmosphere against the background of the earth, which take the form of small lakes or puddles on the surface of asphalt.

It seems unbelievable, but mirages happen not only in the heat above a hot surface, but also in the polar regions. Here you can see another kind of mirage - the upper mirage, when the image of the object appears not under it, but above it. The principle of its occurrence is also based on the temperature difference of the surface air layer, only in the case of the upper mirage, the air at the surface is colder than the air of the upper atmosphere.

But perhaps the most amazing variety of mirages is a phenomenon called Fata Morgana. This is a very complex mirage, which arises as a result of multiple reflection of rays from layers of air with different temperatures. Often, Fata Morgana can be seen above the surface of the water, while the observer sees objects that are hidden from him beyond the horizon. For example, sailors could observe a ship that actually sails far from them, or buildings on the embankment, which are also located at a considerable distance.

All this variety of mirages gave rise to many legends, the most famous of which is associated with a ghost ship. But there were islands that some sailors put on the map, and participants in other expeditions could not subsequently discover, and nonexistent castles, and ghostly mountain peaks. Only after this phenomenon was comprehensively studied by physicists, it became clear that all these "ghosts" are nothing more than a mirage - an atmospheric phenomenon.