Mirage over Saronic Gulf

Photographer: Konstantinos Christodoulopoulos
Summary Author: Konstantinos Christodoulopoulos

This mirage was captured at the Saronic Gulf, in southeastern Greece, on November 13, 2007. The time was 7:00 a.m. Eastern European Time (EET), and the air temperature was approximately 10 degrees C (50 F). The object in the mid-ground is a ship and the background object is a small island. When the sea surface is at least several degrees warmer than the layer of air immediately above it, as is often the case during the autumn months, a ray of light traveling through the lower atmosphere will be bent or refracted upward. Therefore, the image of a distant object is displaced downward from its true position creating what is called an inferior mirage.