Fata Morgana (mirage)
A Fata Morgana (Italian: [ˈfaːta morˈɡaːna]) is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon.
These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic.
[1] The optical phenomenon occurs because rays of light bend when they pass through air layers of different temperatures in a steep thermal inversion where an atmospheric duct has formed.
[2] Fata Morgana may be observed from any altitude within the Earth's atmosphere, from sea level up to mountaintops, and even including the view from airplanes.
At that point in time, the air was cooler while the ocean was probably a little bit warmer, which caused the thermal inversion to be not as extreme as it was few hours before.
Fata Morgana mirages are visible to the naked eye, but in order to be able to see the detail within them, it is best to view them through binoculars, a telescope, or as is the case in the images here, through a telephoto lens.
Morgan is associated not only with Sicily's Mount Etna (the supposedly hollow mountain locally identified as Avalon since the 12th century[8]), but also with sirens.
[10] For example, a local legend connects Morgan and her magical mirages with Roger I of Sicily and the Norman conquest of the island from the Arabs.
[11][12] Walter Charleton, in his 1654 treatise "Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana", devotes several pages to the description of the Morgana of Rhegium, in the Strait of Messina (Book III, Chap.
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.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Fata Morgana mirages may have played a role in a number of unrelated "discoveries" of arctic and antarctic land masses which were later shown not to exist.
[15] Three-quarters of a century later, in 1886, Baron Eduard Toll, a Baltic German explorer in Russian service, reported observing Sannikov Land during another expedition to the New Siberian Islands.
[17] Toll and three others were lost after they departed their ship, which was stuck in ice for the winter, and embarked on a risky expedition by dog sled.
[19] Some historians and geographers have theorised that the land mass that Sannikov and Toll saw was actually Fata Morganas of Bennett Island.
When he reached Lancaster Sound in Canada, he sighted, in the distance, a land mass with mountains, directly ahead in the ship's course.
[22] Benjamin Morrell reported that, in March 1823, while on a voyage to the Antarctic and southern Pacific Ocean, he had explored what he thought was the east coast of New South Greenland.
[26] Searches for the land that Morrell claimed to have explored would continue into the early 20th century before New South Greenland's existence was conclusively disproven.
Finally, on 27 April, after they had covered some 200 km (125 miles) of dangerous sea ice, MacMillan was forced to admit that Piugaattoq was right—the land that they had sighted was in fact a mirage (probably a Fata Morgana).
Our powerful glasses, however, brought out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the white, the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow-capped peaks to such a degree that, had we not been out on the frozen sea for 150 miles [240 km], we would have staked our lives upon its reality.
The line beyond which this phenomenon was observable seemed to strike from about the middle portion of Amherst Island across to the southeast, for while the lower half of the island presented its usual appearance, the upper half was unnaturally distorted and thrown upward in columnar shape with an apparent height of two to three hundred feet.
While she appeared slightly distorted on the surface of the water, her image was inverted upon the background of the cloud referred to, and both blending together produced a curious sight.
At the same time the ship and its shadow were again repeated in a more shadowy form, but distinct, in the foreground, the base being a line of smooth water.
A close examination of the map showed the mirage did not cause the slightest distortion, the gradual rise of the city from the water being rendered perfectly.
[37][38][39] An Antarctic Fata Morgana, seen from a C-47 transport flight, was recounted: We were going along smoothly and all of a sudden a mountain peak seemed to rise up out of nowhere up ahead.
Official UFO investigations in France indicate: As is well known, atmospheric ducting is the explanation for certain optical mirages, and in particular the arctic illusion called "fata morgana" where distant ocean or surface ice, which is essentially flat, appears to the viewer in the form of vertical columns and spires, or "castles in the air".
[42] This would also explain the way in which the legend has changed over time: The first reports were of a stationary light, which in a Fata Morgana effect would be an image of a campfire.
As the weary traveler sees In desert or prairie vast, Blue lakes, overhung with trees That a pleasant shadow cast;
In the lines, "the weary traveller sees / In desert or prairie vast, / Blue lakes, overhung with trees / That a pleasant shadow cast", because of the mention of blue lakes, it is clear that the author is actually describing not a Fata Morgana, but rather a common inferior or desert mirage.
about the submarine USS Barb, the crew sees a Fata Morgana (called an "arctic mirage" in the book) of four ships trapped in the ice.
[46] The Fata Morgana is briefly mentioned in the 1936 H. P. Lovecraft horror novel At the Mountains of Madness, in which the narrator states: "On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage—the first I had ever seen—in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles."
