A man says he was ‘dumbfounded’ to look out over a town in Cornwall, in the south-west of England, at sea and a giant ship floating in the air over the water. It was not his eyes that deceived him, but a rare weather phenomenon that causes an optical illusion that is seen more frequently in the icy North Pole.
David Morris / APEX
BBC meteorologist David Braine explained that what David Morris captured with his camera lens was not levitation, but a “superior aerial mirror” caused by conditions more typical in the Arctic than on the southern English coast.
David Morris / APEX
“Superior mirage occurs due to the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies near the ocean with warmer air above it,” Braine said. “Because cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light to the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the shore, changing how a distant object appears.”
Previous observations of “ghost ships” around the world the illusion may have involved, but the dazzling images captured by Morris seem to be some of the clearest examples of a superior mirage to date.
Braine said that although the phenomenon in this case caused the ship to float over the water, ‘sometimes an object can become visible below the horizon’, throwing objects that would otherwise be invisible into someone’s eyes, almost like a giant -mirror.