At the end of the 19th century, a startling event was published by the meteorologist from Germany N. Bedigen. On the night of 1898, March 27, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the crew of a ship called "Matador" saw an inexplicable phenomenon, to which they were very much surprised. 30 minutes before midnight, the watchman saw a large sailing ship about two miles from the Matador.
This ship was battling the storm, although the ocean was surprisingly calm at the time. At this time of day, the moonlight of the tropics is as visible as during the day. Therefore, the crew of the "Matador" in fearful anticipation and with pale faces awaited a terrible denouement, watching as waves of large size rolled over the bow, froth and ran along the deck of an unknown ship. Then suddenly the ghost ship changed course and appeared directly in front of the ship. The ship's crew was terrified and expected an inevitable collision, some of the sailors even tried to throw themselves overboard. But the ghost ship again abruptly decided to change course. After it sailed in full sail towards the south, carrying away the wind and waves, the sailors of the Matador saw that the light emanating from the portholes of the captains' cabin on the unknown ship suddenly went out, and after a few minutes the ship disappeared altogether.
Later, the captain of the "Matador" learned that on March 27 of the same year a Danish ship got into a storm at about midnight. During a strong storm, a lamp exploded in the captains' cabin, and the senior navigator received severe burns. The dates of the vision of the sailors of the ship "Matador" and this incident coincided. This made it possible to establish a connection between the mirage and the real events that happened on the Danish ship, which was caught in a storm.
If you believe what Bedige published, it turns out that sometimes you can see what the distant horizon hides from us. But is this possible, if so, how? We all know that a spoon in a glass looks broken. The reason for this is the difference in the density of air and water. When passing from one medium to another, the light rays are refracted and the rectilinear path is changed, and the deviation occurs towards the dense medium. This is the law of physics. Light beams in the air are also not straightforward. After a sunbeam from a layer of air of one density falls into a layer of another density, it begins to deflect. Most often, the refraction of light-rays in the air is insignificant, the pictures of visible objects are not displaced or distorted. But sometimes it is different.
This is what the captain of a ship once saw near the North Pole. His ship was sailing among the debris of ice, twisting in the rays of the sun. Suddenly, objects that were in the distance began to rise up and hover in the air. The amazed sailors saw large mountains of ice, undulating coast with hills and snow fields with ice hummocks. An even more surprising phenomenon was seen by Roman soldiers in 1878. Half an hour before the mirage appeared, a detachment left the fort, which was then seen in the sky. There was talk that, they say, all the soldiers from this detachment died and these are their souls. Is it mystic or not?
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In the air, under some circumstances, so-called atmospheric mirrors can form. In a word, air is able to reflect light - rays. This happens in the early morning, when the lower air layers still remain cooled from contact with the earth's crust, and the upper ones reflect from themselves, as from a mirror, everything that is above the ground. At this time, you can also see what is located beyond the horizon. Floating ships, mountains or distant islands can start to appear in the air. One traveler so managed to see the image of the whole city on the seashore, but upside down, which hung in the air. He clearly saw houses, streets, towers. Struck by what he saw, he decided to hurry to draw what he saw, and after he walked several kilometers, he saw the same city, the images of which he saw in the air.
Most often, mirages can be seen at a time when there is no wind, which, if present, can break air mirrors. But the air mirror is not afraid of light vibrations in the air. When layers of air of different densities begin to move, distorted images can appear in the air. An interesting story happened with the participants of the expedition of the Nordenskjold explorer from Sweden in the 19th century. Events took place in Chukotka. Not far from their camp, they saw a polar bear and immediately rushed for their guns. But when one of the expedition members was about to shoot, the bear flew into the air, spreading its large wings. In flight, it was seen how the bear began to shrink and, to the surprise of the hunters, he turned into a simple seagull.
Higher mirages are able to bring objects that are far away from us closer to us and increase their size, but sometimes they can make the image clearer and clearer. Here it turns out that in addition to specular reflection, there is also a magnifying lens in the atmosphere. But what is she like? And it is not known how far one can see during the appearance of the atmospheric mirror.
It turns out that we can see reflected distant objects through a large air lens. Or maybe pictures of distant objects are simply transmitted from one mirage to another, as if in a chain? And finally, that striking incident, described at the very beginning, which happened to the crew of the ship "Matador". It is very difficult to give him an explanation. It can be concluded that the optical mechanism of mirages has not yet been fully deciphered.