Everything about Fata Morgana Mirage totally explained
A
fata morgana is a
mirage, an
optical phenomenon which results from a
temperature inversion. Objects on the horizon, such as islands, cliffs, ships or icebergs, appear elongated and elevated.
In calm weather, the undisturbed interface between warm air over cold dense air near the surface of the ground may act as a refracting
lens, producing an upside-down image, over which the distant direct image appears to hover. Fata morgana are usually seen in the morning after a cold night which has resulted in the radiation of heat into space. An early mention of the term
fata morgana in English, in 1818, referred to such a mirage noticed in the
Strait of Messina, between
Calabria and
Sicily. It is common in high mountain valleys, such as the
San Luis Valley of
Colorado, where the effect is exaggerated due to the curvature of the floor of the valley canceling out the curvature of the Earth. They may be seen in Arctic seas on very still mornings, or commonly on Antarctic ice shelves.
Walter Charleton, in his 1654 treatise "Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana," devotes several pages to the description of the famous Morgana of Rhegium, in the Strait of Messina (Book III, Chap. II, Sect. II). He records that a like phenomenon was reported in Africa by
Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian writing in the 1st century B.C., and that the Rhegium Fata Morgana was described by
Damascius, a Greek Philosopher of the sixth century A.D. In addition, Charleton tells us that
Athanasius Kircher described the Rhegium mirage in his book of travels.
The ill-fated
Crocker Land Expedition of
1913 was sent to map
Crocker Land, a land mass in the
Arctic Ocean that turned out to be nothing but a Fata Morgana.
Fata morgana is a much more complex form of
superior mirages, which are distinct from the more common
inferior mirages. While with a simple
superior mirage an observer sees an inverted image below the correct one, with fata morgana an observer would see complex alternation of distorted correct and inverted images.
Fata Morgana in popular culture
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