A resident of the UK, Ryan Rushforth, managed to capture an amazing phenomenon on his phone - a tourist liner "floating through the air."
The ship, with a length of 347 meters and a displacement of 168 thousand tons, seemed to just hover in the air. The Briton noted that it is very unusual and incredible to see such a phenomenon in person.
Such a mirage, called Fata Morgana, is an optical illusion. It occurs due to the inversion of temperatures in the atmosphere, when cold air masses are located close to the surface of the water, and a layer of warm air forms above them. Due to its higher density, cold air refracts light and thus distorts the view of an object located in the distance.
The Fata Morgana phenomenon appears when a gradient of temperature layers of air arises over land and sea - the hot one is on top of the cold one, which causes the bouncing light from the liner to be refracted, passing through space in the air masses.
Shortly before this event, off the coast of Britain, local residents photographed another “soaring” ship. Meteorologists explain that such mirages can most often be observed in the Arctic.
According to meteorologist David Brain, there are many cases when people were lucky enough to see the phenomenon of “objects flying over water”. However, there is an opposite kind of visual illusion, when an object located on the surface of the water seems to be deepened into it.
Some historians attribute the origin of the ancient legend about the ghost ship "Flying Dutchman" to the Fata Morgana mirage.
