What causes mirages in the desert. What is a mirage? East coast of China

If you have ever walked through an endless desert or on hot asphalt on a hot summer day, then you have probably noticed something like a puddle on the horizon. This phenomenon is called a mirage. It confused entire caravans, gave empty hopes to wanderers and interfered with rescue operations. Today we will tell you why this natural illusion is formed.
People have encountered mirages in the distant past. The literature describes in sufficient detail the fact of the meeting of the Crusaders with such an amazing phenomenon in the Palestinian desert. IN Ancient Egypt For example, mirages were perceived as a certain image of the past - something that existed many years ago.

What is a mirage?
Mirage is an optical phenomenon, which makes it unique and unpredictable. It can be simple and complex. Simple mirages will be, for example, images of water on a road or in fields, deserts, and complex ones will be visions of fabulous structures frozen in the sky.
Researchers have found that a mirage is a natural optical illusion that occurs due to the refraction of light rays between layers of air of different density and temperature. Objects that appear on the horizon really exist, but great distance from the point at which we see them. This is a kind of projection of an image that occurs away from the original object being depicted.

A mirage is often called an "atmospheric mirror". In the mountains, for example, a person can meet his reflection. This phenomenon is formed due to the presence of standing water vapor in the atmosphere. Most often, mirage does not occur in deserts, as many believe, but, on the contrary, in cold climates.

There are many types of mirages:

• In the case of a “side” type mirage, the air layers shift from a horizontal location to an “angled” position. This phenomenon can be noticed at dawn, near the sea or other body of water. If we notice real ship approaching the shore - a copy of it will appear next to it, moving at the same speed in the opposite direction.

• The Distant Mirage is the famous ghost ship of the Flying Dutchman. All sailors are afraid of this vision, as they consider it a bad sign. Such a mirage appears when the air is excessively heated from the ground, and then it rises upward and gradually cools. If, during ascent, this layer encounters warmer layers, a phantom will appear.

• Fata Morgana is the most amazing and mystical type of mirage. This is not just a projection of an object, but also a “copy” of it. As the distance changes, objects also become too distorted and take on a monstrously fantastic appearance. One day French soldiers moved through the desert. In the distance, they noticed a flock of flamingos following each other closely. As the soldiers began to approach closer, the birds turned into horsemen in white robes.

Where are mirages most common?
Scientists believe that a mirage can be found anywhere on our planet and even in the stratosphere. Cosmonaut Georgy Mikhailovich Grechko, while in space, took a photograph of an ice floe hovering in the air above the clouds.
But there are places where mirages occur more often than usual and you don’t have to fly into space to do this.
For example, Alaska is considered the most popular place for observing mirages. This can be explained very simply - climate. The colder the air, the more distinct and clear it looks a natural phenomenon. In 1889, in southeastern Alaska, one of local residents, while walking near Mount Fairweather, saw an image huge city with skyscrapers, towers and temples. Although the source of the mirage was hundreds of kilometers from the peninsula.

A thousand tourists saw something similar in the city of Penglai, on the east coast of China. Due to heavy rains that lasted for several days, a very dense fog formed and subsequently formed a mirage with very high clarity. On for four For hours, residents of this city watched illusory buildings, wide avenues filled with people and cars.
Residents of France have repeatedly observed how on the horizon Mediterranean Sea, where it is no longer possible to distinguish water from sky, from sea ​​surface The ridge of the Corsican Mountains rises, although the distance to the mainland is about two hundred kilometers.
Despite completely logical explanations from the point of view of physics, mirages remain something mystical and mysterious for us. And how many more nature conceals within itself phenomena, the origin of which will remain a mystery to us.

How I would like to see a real mirage! Imagine, cities, quaint castles, or entire armies hanging in the sky! But it turns out that many of us already saw a mirage. It's really very simple! If you stand on the highway against the sun on a hot summer day, you will notice how the road surface a few kilometers away from us seems to plunge into a lake shining in the sun. Let's try to get closer to the “lake” - it will move away, and no matter how much we walk towards it, it will always be in the distance. In ancient times, such mirages drove travelers, languishing from heat and thirst, to despair. In this story I will tell you what a mirage is.

Over one and a half thousand mirages appear over the Sahara Desert every year. Travelers who happened to wander through the hot desert sands for several days say that sometimes they clearly saw a blooming oasis with palm trees and ponds literally a hundred meters away. It would seem that all that remains is to make one last effort - and you can enjoy your long-awaited vacation! However, both 200 and 500 meters have been covered, and the air remains the same hot and dry, the sands do not end

Since ancient times, people have seen mirages, about which many legends have been preserved. But the first records about them began to appear in ship's logs, in which everything unusual was recorded in detail. For example, in the books about the whalers' voyage to Greenland in 1820, there is a record that the ship's commander observed Big city full of castles and temples. The sailor even sketched this phenomenon in detail. But it turned out that real life there is nothing like it.

In 1840, residents of one of the towns of England saw unusual white buildings in the sky. Since there was nothing in their homeland, the residents considered this a confirmation of the fairy tale about fairies living in the crystal city. The vision hung in the air for three hours.

But champions of mirages have long been recognized... No, imagine, not the desert. And cold Alaska. The stronger the frost there, the clearer the visions. They even publish a special journal for observing mirages. And tourists are taken to admire how mountains rise on the flat ocean horizon, and then disappear to God knows where.

So what is a mirage? Imagine the atmosphere of our planet in the form of an airy cake, which consists of many layers with different temperatures. The density of air and how the light beam “breaks” depends on temperature. 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 colder ones. Thus, a sharp temperature difference can bend the path of the light beam.

So a mirage is a kind of air “lens” that is constantly shifting. Inside the air lens are both the observer and visible object. The traveler can never get closer to the vision. When he moves forward, the mirage moves along with him

This is interesting:

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, the cruiser Repulse, attacked by Japanese torpedo bombers near Ceylon, was sinking. The distance between the ships at that time was 900 km.

People have seen mirages since ancient times, about which many legends have been preserved. 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. 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.

1. Mirages come in several types: lake, or lower; upper (they appear directly in the sky) or distant vision mirages; lateral mirages. More complex look The mirage is called "Fata Morgana"

2. Lower (lake) mirage. Inferior mirages occur primarily in cases where the layers of air near the Earth's surface (for example, in a desert) are so hot that the rays of light emanating from objects are strongly bent.

3. 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

4. Superior mirage (distance vision mirage)

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.

5. Residents Cote d'Azur France clear morning More than once we have seen 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 Cote d'Azur.

6. Fata Morgana - difficult 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.

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

Inferior Mirage

It is observed with a large vertical temperature gradient (its drop 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, on a road going into the distance on a hot summer day you see a puddle.

Superior Mirage

Observed over the cold earth's surface with inverse 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. Such conditions may occur over Greenland and in the Iceland area. Perhaps due to this effect, called hillingar(from Icelandic hillingar), the first settlers of Iceland learned of the existence of Greenland.

Superior mirages 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.

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

Side mirages can appear as a reflection from a heated vertical wall. A case is described when a smooth concrete wall of a fortress suddenly shone like a mirror, reflecting surrounding objects. On a hot day, a mirage was observed whenever the wall was sufficiently heated by the sun's rays.

Fata Morgana

Complex mirage phenomena with a sharp distortion of the appearance of objects are called Fata Morgana. Fata Morgana(Italian fata Morgana - fairy Morgana, according to legend, living on seabed and deceiving travelers with ghostly visions) is a rarely encountered 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 form in the lower layers of the atmosphere (usually due to temperature differences). various densities capable of giving specular reflections. As a result of reflection, as well as refraction of rays, it is actually existing facilities They give 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.

Volume mirage

In the mountains, very rarely, under certain conditions, you can see a “distorted self” for quite some time. close range. This phenomenon is explained by the presence of “standing” water vapor in the air. [[K:Wikipedia:Articles without sources (country: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. )]][[K:Wikipedia:Articles without sources (country: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. )]]

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

Excerpt characterizing Mirage

I nodded in agreement to North.
– Please tell me the truth... Tell me about them, Sever...

Radomir, anticipating his ambulance
death, sends a nine-year-old
Svetodar to live in Spain... Chu-
there is deep sadness and general
despair.

His thoughts flew far, far away, plunging into ancient, hidden memories covered with the ashes of centuries. And an amazing story began...
– As I already told you earlier, Isidora, after the death of Jesus and Magdalene, their entire bright and sad life was entwined with shameless lies, transferring this lie also to the descendants of this amazing, courageous family... They were “dressed” with ANOTHER FAITH. Their pure images surrounded by the lives of ALIEN PEOPLE who had not lived for a long time... WORDS were put into their mouths that they had NEVER SPEAKED... They were made RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMES that ANOTHER FAITH, the most deceitful and criminal that has ever existed, had and is committing on the ground...
* * *
From the author: Many, many years have passed since my meeting with Isidora... And now, remembering and living through the former distant years, I managed to find (while in France) the most interesting materials, largely confirming the veracity of Sever's story about the life of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Radomir, which, I think, will be interesting for everyone reading Isidora’s story, and perhaps even help shed at least some light on the lie “ rulers of the world this." Please read about the materials I found in the “Supplement” after the chapters of Isidora.
* * *
I felt that this whole story was very difficult for the North. Apparently he broad soul I still did not agree to accept such a loss and was still very sick of it. But he honestly continued to talk further, apparently realizing that later, perhaps, I would no longer be able to ask him anything more.

This stained glass window depicts Magdalene
wife in the form of a Teacher standing over
kings, aristocrats, philosophers
families and scientists...

– Do you remember, Isidora, I told you that Jesus Radomir never had anything to do with the false teaching he is shouting about? Christian church? It was completely opposite to what Jesus himself taught, and then Magdalene. They taught people real KNOWLEDGE, taught them what we taught them here in Meteora...
And Maria knew even more, since she could freely draw her knowledge from wide open spaces Space, after she left us. They lived closely surrounded by Sorcerers and gifted ones, whom people later renamed “apostles”... in the notorious “bible” they turned out to be old, distrustful Jews... who, I think, if they could, would truly betray Jesus a thousand times. His “apostles” in reality were the Knights of the Temple, but not built by human hands, and created by the high thought of Radomir himself - the Spiritual Temple of Truth and Knowledge. At first there were only nine of these knights, and they gathered together in order, to the best of their abilities, to protect Radomir and Magdalena in that foreign and dangerous country for them, into which fate had so mercilessly thrown them. And the task of the Knights of the Temple was also to (if something irreparable happened!) preserve the TRUTH, which these two wonderful, bright people, who gave their Gift and their pure lives for peace on their beloved, but still very cruel planet...
– So the “apostles” were also completely different?! What were they like?! Can you tell me about them, North?
I was so interested that for a short moment I even managed to “put to sleep” my torment and fears, I managed to forget the coming pain for a moment!.. I brought down a real barrage of questions on Sever, not even knowing for sure whether there were answers to them. I wanted to know so much real story these courageous people, not vulgarized by lies for five hundred long years!!!
- Oh, they were truly wonderful people - the Knights of the Temple - Isidora!.. Together with Radomir and Magdalena, they created a magnificent backbone of COURAGE, HONOR and FAITH, on which was built the bright TEACHING, once left by our ancestors for the salvation of our native land. Two of the Knights of the Temple were our students, as well as hereditary warriors from the oldest European aristocratic families. They became our brave and gifted Sorcerers, ready to do anything to save Jesus and Magdalene. Four were descendants of the Rus-Merovingians, who also had a great Gift, like all their distant ancestors - the kings of Thrace... Like Magdalene herself, also born from this extraordinary dynasty, and proudly carried her family Gift. Two were our Magi, who voluntarily left Meteora in order to protect their beloved Disciple, Jesus Radomir, who was going to his own death. They could not betray Radomir in their souls, and even knowing what awaited him, they followed him without regret. Well, the last, ninth of the knights-defenders, about whom no one still knows or writes, was brother Christ himself, the son of the White Magus - Radan (Ra - dan, given by Ra)... It was he who managed to save his son Radomir after his death. But, unfortunately, while defending him, he died himself...

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 in Penglai for two days 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. How more complex form 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. It is customary to classify as a type of mirages Polar Lights, mirages-werewolves, "The Flying Dutchmen".

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 them 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 a railway track or a hill above it, when the sun is slightly to the side or to the side and slightly in front 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. 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 and wandered towards it from last bit of 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.

Isokari Lighthouse

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 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, will go into it.

In Aristotle's Meteorology typical example: 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 ship received many various 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 got its name in honor of fairy tale heroine Fata Morgana or, translated from Italian, fairies of 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 Bloemfontein fortress, in England, saw in the sky battle formations british army, and so clearly that one 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 sorcerer physical 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 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.

Mirage ghosts

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 warp zone sun 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. Swedish polar explorer Nordenskiöld has observed more than once in the Arctic werewolf mirages:

"One day, a bear, whose approach was expected and which everyone could clearly see, 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 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, heard the cry of a cook fiddling around it: “A bear, a 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".

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 cards with marks of 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.