Fata Morgana: a city floating in the sea, a flying ship and an amazing phenomenon

A city floating in the sea, a “flying” ship; mountains, icebergs, cliffs, islands or castles that seem from another era, outside a fairy tale. Nowadays, one person takes out their smartphone, snaps a picture, applies a filter to it, and launches it into the social media universe. Right away, the dopamine It climbs to the top of his head: he receives likes and comments. What is it about what you see?

An illusion named after a legendary sorceress from medieval literature. According to Jorge Olcina, director of the Climatology Laboratory of the University of Alicante “It’s a big mirage which originates in thermal inversion zones, where layers of warm -terrestrial- and cooler -marine air coincide”.

This is the “Fata Morgana” effect. The first time it was recorded dates back to 1818, but after more than 200 years it continues to amaze those who take a walk on the coasts of Barcelona, ​​​​Norway, New Zealand; but above all in the Strait of Messina – the tip of the boot of the Italian peninsula -, between Calabria and Sicily, surprising images can be seen on the horizon.

A viral phenomenon in the networks

As of December 2019, a “floating island” off the coast of Barcelona shaken social networks. Millions of plays, retweets and likes on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, among other platforms.

But there was one great uncertainty: what was that disturbing image that could be seen from the coast.

Thanks to Josep Lluis Laporta, who managed to photograph the phenomenon more closely, it was possible to discover it it was a large container ship.

“By navigating the area, I could observe the ghost island or the ghost ship,” he explained The avant-garde. “I think it’s a container ship that could be augmented by the Fata Morgana phenomenon,” she explained to Spanish media.

Is closed: “Depends on how the sun hits it, it can be confusing”.

In April of this year, the user of Facebook Monica Schaffner video captured on a beach on Mount Maunganui: “I filmed this illusion that made it look like a ship was floating in mid-air,” he wrote on the wall.

Once again the networks exploded and the video made the rounds of the world’s news portals.

the legend of morgan

The denomination is linked to Morgana, King Arthur’s sister from medieval literature. It is said that she was a witch or a fairy, and from here comes fata morgana (fairy is fairy in Italian), although there are also those who think that the origin of the name of the powerful sorceress derives from mori-gena, which translated it means “born of the sea”and connect it to the sirens for the resemblance to the English name (marmoid). It should be remembered that in classical mythology sirens lure sailors with their songs to lead them to certain death.

Second Wikipedia, the fairy Morgana is a female character, sometimes presented as an antagonist of King Arthur and an enemy of Guinevere. In the early Welsh tales Morgana has a clear antecedent in the goddess Modron, who married King Urien and begat Owain (as did Morgana Le Fay of Arthur’s death). In the Merlini life (Life of Merlin) from the 12th century, Morgana (“Morgen”) is said to be the eldest of the nine sisters who rule Avalon. Geoffrey of Monmouth speaks of Morgana as a healer and a changeling.

Various sources describe Morgana as a disciple of Merlin, and then as his rival. She seduces and bewitches Merlin with her beauty and his magic. Morgana learns magic from Merlin and later uses it to harm Arthur’s knights and Queen Guinevere.

In some legends, Morgana tries to conspire against Arthur by stealing the sword of Excalibur and giving it to her beloved Sir Accolon to assassinate. Arturo kills Accolon in a duel and retires to rest in a nearby convent. Morgana, enraged, takes back the sword (which makes Arthur invincible) and throws it into the sea.

From there, the name of the mirage was born: the navigators who encountered the deceptive visual effect they thought it was sorcery or a spell and they named him after the character they knew from the literature of the Middle Ages: the fairy morgana.

In the movies the character of Morgana was played by actresses of the stature of played by actresses of the stature of Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham CarterEva Green or Julianna Margulies.

What is the “fata morgana” effect?

In place disclosure weather. es by the famous Spanish meteorologist José Miguel Viñasthe mirage is explained.

When light rays pass through the earth’s atmosphere, they undergo variations in their trajectory, originally rectilinear, bending sharply when passing through layers of air with different refractive indices and consequently different optical properties. The light from the sun bends more the closer the solar disk is to the horizon. The light – reflected in this case – coming from objects on the horizon is significantly affected by atmospheric refraction, giving rise to unique mirages.

Under normal conditions, air density decreases with height, being higher near the Earth’s surface than in the upper levels of the atmosphere. However, it is relatively common for the air that we have placed close to the ground becomes very hot or, conversely, that it cools down a lot compared to the air that rests on itplaced at an immediately higher level. In such cases, inferior or superior mirages are produced, the latter being what we call fata morgana. The lower ones would be those that give rise to those “puddles” in the summer that seem to appear in the distance on the overheated asphalt of the roads.

For a Morgana to be observed, there must be a marked temperature inversion in the low levels of the atmosphere, near the ground or sea surface. Such atmospheric conditions are relatively common in high latitudes (polar regions)when the weather is calm and very cold air accumulates near the earth’s surface, by flowing over it a layer of air at a higher temperature. The interface between the two layers therefore acts as a powerful refractive lens, producing an inverted image of objects located on the horizon, which we see placed above their original position, giving the impression that they are floating in the air. Sometimes the object generating the inverted image is below our horizon.