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When appearing on roads due to the hot asphalt, it is often referred to as a "highway mirage". Common instances when heat haze occurs include images of objects viewed across asphalt concrete (also known as tarmac) roads and over masonry rooftops on hot days, above and behind fire (as in burning candles, patio heaters, and campfires), and through exhaust gases from jet engines. Heat haze, also called heat shimmer, refers to the inferior mirage observed when viewing objects through a mass of heated air. See also: Schlieren, Twinkling, and Astronomical seeing In any case, mirages are usually not larger than about half a degree high (roughly the angular diameter of the Sun and Moon) and are from objects between dozens of meters and a few kilometers away. If several temperature layers are present, several mirages may mix, perhaps causing double images. A combination of vibration and extension are also possible. The image will be distorted accordingly it may vibrate or be extended vertically ( towering) or horizontally ( stooping). Since warmer air rises while cooler air (being denser) sinks, the layers will mix, causing turbulence. The image is usually upside-down, enhancing the illusion that the sky image seen in the distance is a specular reflection on a puddle of water or oil acting as a mirror. Therefore, rays coming from the top of the object will arrive lower than those from the bottom.
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Light rays coming from a particular distant object all travel through nearly the same layers of air, and all are refracted at about the same angle.
MIRAGE DEFINITION PATCH
The mirage causes the observer to see a bright and bluish patch on the ground. The real object in an inferior mirage is the (blue) sky or any distant (therefore bluish) object in that same direction. In an inferior mirage, the mirage image appears below the real object. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.Īn inferior mirage seen in the Mojave Desert in a Nevada spring What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location.
MIRAGE DEFINITION SERIES
Mirages can be categorized as "inferior" (meaning lower), "superior" (meaning higher) and " Fata Morgana", one kind of superior mirage consisting of a series of unusually elaborate, vertically stacked images, which form one rapidly-changing mirage. The word comes to English via the French (se) mirer, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at". Ī mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. Various kinds of mirages in one location taken over the course of six minutes, not shown in chronological order.