I’m struggling to get my head around the explanation for the incredible photo in this article.
This is an example of atmospheric refraction, and specifically “looming”, where the light reflected from the ship to your eyes is refracted into an ark making the ship appear to be floating above the water. In reality, the ship is at or over the horizon and the water it sits on is at such an angle to the incident light that it is not visible even though light from it is being refracted as well, making the ship appear to be floating in thin air. You can see that the ship ends at the waterline (no keel) and if you had high enough resolution in the image you should see waves moving up and down at the boundary.
Stranger
Thanks that makes a bit more sense. There looks to a be a patch of water where a ship might have blocked the wind well in front of the horizon, but perhaps that patch is caused by rocks. So that ship is in fact beyond (or at) the horizon not where that patch of calm water is?
Is the ark run by NOAA?
Who else would predict 40 days and 40 nights of rain?
Yeah, it looks to me like there are almost entirely submerged rocks “underneath” the ship, which makes it look like we’re seeing the ship floating in air, a gap of air, and then the ship’s wake in the water beneath it.
An ark
Ark
ARK
Goddamn autocorrect keeps insisting that “arc” should be “ark”. Clearly, I’ve been writing too much about Indiana Jones movies lately.
Yes, exactly. The light is being bent over the horizon. This happens particularly over the ocean (and to a lesser extent over large deserts) because of a temperature inversion caused by heating or cooling of the air from the surface causing large temperature and relative humidity gradients resulting in dramatic refraction of light traveling through the air. In an extreme case, you can get a Fata Morgana where the image can also change in size and configuration rapidly.
Stranger
Excellent picture of this illusion. Never seen one so clear of such a large man made object.
But you set up “did NOAA build the ark” quite beautifully, perhaps a unique opportunity for which I shall be eternally grateful.
Yes, obviously we know the phenomenon is real, but this is so good it’s almost suspicious.
Holy moly. Usually, if I know it’s an illusion, I can force my brain to see through it. But not this one; no matter how closely I look, I can’t see this as anything but a ship flying 20 or so feet off the surface of the water. Like Nick Fury licensed the helicarrier technology to Maersk Sealand.
People saying this is a false horizon which isn’t quite the same as a Fata Morgana (or is it?), with the patch of water under the ship merely appearing to be the same colour as the sky.
The only tell I notice that it’s a mirage (besides it being up in the air) is that the atmospheric perspective seem off–it’s more foggy like it would be further away than it appears.
A mirage. Uh huh. Sure. That’s what They want you to believe.
d&r
So… is this the Philadelphia Experiment, or just the result of budget cuts in the extraterrestrials’ Earth-exploration program?
Talk about coincidences. Yesterday’s episode of the Stuff To Blow Your Mind podcast was about Fata Morgana. The completed episode is still on my phone right now.
Just do a google image search for fata morgana mirage to find many pics, some of them rather amazing. There are some of whole city skylines with skyscrapers!
Yes, looking at images of Fata Morganas, there is some evidence that this type of very clear floating boat image is actually a false horizon, not a mirage. The example below is not a mirage (reflections from parts of the ship in the smooth water) and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a bit of haze can make the horizon completely obscured, add in a very smooth calm area of ocean and you could get something like the OP.
This article agrees that this type of image is a false horizon and not a Fata Morgana. A real Fata Morgana shows distortion and inversion of the object. In this case there is neither.
Well that does explain why this image is so clear.
Some of those must be false horizons, as this one surely is because the horizon is actually visible.