Sometimes people go to the the desert and they see things that are not actually there, such as a water hole, or an oasis. Centuries back, there have even been accounts of travelers seeing entire towers in the distance, as if they had been transferred miles away from where they actually were. Mysteriously, if anyone approached closer, the objects would disappear or even keep moving farther away into the distance. This phenomenon has completely boggled wanderers for a long time. Now, in this modern era, there is newfound research on this completely natural phenomenon. It is called the mirage effect.
The mirage effect can be explained like this: when the air above the ground (or water) is warmer than the actual surface temperature, or vice versa,…show more content… This mirage has a very old history that goes back to Arthurian times in Camelot. The Fata Morgana is named after King Arthur’s half sister, Morgan le Fay. She was supposedly a fairy or a sorceress who could create images of castles or land in midair. In Arthurian legends, the mirages bewitched sailors and led them to their deaths. Le Fay gets all the credit, but it is not actually her who puts these magical looking images into the air. The Fata Morgana mirage is much like the Novaya Zemlya mirage because they both use the curvature of the Earth, but it is very complex and changes fast. These compressed, stretched, inverted and erect images are often seen in the Strait of Messina. The Fata Morgana mirages are usually two or three different images and they can change in a matter of seconds. These images can be anything, even entire cities. This mirage, because it is superior, places the transported images higher than the real object. A Fata Morgana is not limited to Sicily (where le Fay was said to have used her sorcery) and they can be witnessed on land, at sea, in polar regions, or in desert…show more content… Some assume, that since mirages are just an illusion, they cannot be captured in a picture. A mirage photographer explains, “A mirage happens when a bunch of rays of light take a detour on the way to your eyes -- or your camera. When you look down a blacktop highway, and see a pool of water in the distance, you understand the "water" you see is an illusion. The light rays that create that image, however, are real. Your eye can see them, and your camera can record them.” (The Mirage Observer). The way the light bends and displaces objects can be seen through a lense, as well. Cameras, much like human eyes and brains, do not account for