Apr 10, 2025 · In the arctic mirage a distant object appears right way up but higher up than the actual location. Though arctic and desert mirages seem to be quite different, they share a common fundamental cause.

Mar 2, 1995 · Is the Great One a grand illusion? Is the tallest mountain in North America a mirage? A friend recently told me that the Mount McKinley we see as a huge lump on the southwest Fairbanks horizon is actually an impostor, an optical illusion that really isn't there. She said that because of the curvature of the Earth, we shouldn't be able to see the mountain from Fairbanks or from Anchorage. Her ...

Apr 10, 2025 · Fata Morgana, also known as Morgan le Fay, was a fairy enchantress skilled in the art of changing shape. In one traditional story she was King Arthur's sister and learned many of her skills from Merlin the Magician. A special type of complex mirage, one that sometimes gives the impression of a castle half in the air and half in the sea, is named after Fata Morgana. She was known to live in a ...

Apr 10, 2025 · Even when the air is stagnant, there is enough air movement to cause the mirage images to come and go rapidly. Unfortunately, the same layering that gives us glorious mirages compounds the severe air pollution problem in the Fairbanks area.

Apr 10, 2025 · Was this a mirage, the northern lights or what? A possible explanation is the Parry arc named after the explorer, W. E. Parry, who first reported seeing the phenomenon while searching for a northwest passage in 1819-1820.

Jan 23, 2025 · The Arctic mirage is a different story altogether. During inversion conditions in the Tanana Valley, there is a layer of dense, cold air next to the ground with warmer air overlying it. Under these conditions light rays between two points are bent downward (convex upward), making it appear that distant objects are higher than they actually are. This produces the floating peaks of the Alaska ...

Apr 10, 2025 · Fireball meteors, auroras, noctilucent clouds, mirage phenomena, atmospheric dust, city lights reflected from clouds, earthquake lights, lightning, forest fires, ice crystals and raindrops in the air, plus a host of other phenomena can create strange effects.

The Harrier is fairly bulky, intended primarily for ground support, and does not have the fighter potential of the sleek Mirage. But it does not require long runways on which to take off or land, and can even hover like a helicopter. Performance alone probably will not decide the contest between these two aircraft.

Apr 10, 2025 · The Northern Lights and the aurora borealis are two names for the same thing. The term aurora borealis was first used by Galileo in 1619 to suggest the likeness of the northern lights to an early dawn in the northern sky, an appearance it sometimes has to those who live at low or intermediate latitudes in the northern hemisphere. Once the term aurora borealis was introduced, Galileo and others ...

Jan 29, 2004 · By Ann’s Greenhouses, less than one mile later, the temperature was plus 8. We stopped at a pullout near Ann’s and noticed that the spruce trees on the hillsides seemed to be shimmering, a mirage-type effect caused by warm air mixing with cold and wreaking havoc with the light rays reflected from the trees.