Jan 30, 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. It is that light rays passing from an object through air to an observer always refract (bend) in the direction of increasing air density.

Mar 2, 1995 · This type of arctic mirage differs from "inferior" mirages, those that occur in deserts or over hot road surfaces, because the air layers are reversed. In a desert or on hot blacktop, heated air lies at the surface, covered by a layer of cooler air.

Jan 30, 2025 · The fate morgana mirage is one that can occur only where there are alternating warm and cold layers of air near the ground or water surface. Instead of traveling straight through these layers, light is bent towards the colder, hence denser, air. The result can be a rather complicated light path and a strange image of a distant object.

Jan 30, 2025 · Though popular lore has it that mirages occur in deserts, Fairbanks has an unusual number. It is quite common to look out across the Tanana Valley and see elevated lines of trees and rapidly changing square-topped images of the peaks in the Alaska Range to the south.

Jan 23, 2025 · Art Greenwelt of Fairbanks asks the question: "Why do peaks of the Alaska Range, when seen from Fairbanks during the winter, sometimes appear to be chopped off, flattened into mesas, or even floating in midair?"

News of the war in the Falkland Islands must surely bring back memories to veterans of the struggle for the Aleutians in World War II.

Jan 30, 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.

Jan 9, 2025 · Among reports of peculiar mirages or other strange phenomena observed in the Arctic is one described by P. Berwick of Fairbanks. In that instance several people at a DEW-Line site saw, on two different nights, what appeared to be the lights of a large city on the horizon. Was this a mirage, the northern lights or what?

5 days ago · 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.

Jun 13, 2024 · Gasohol, a mixture of 90% unleaded gasoline and 10% ethyl alcohol, can be used in autos without making carburetor adjustments. Whether better or worse mirage results is debatable; most results so far indicate it is worse compared to burning gasoline.