Very rare (blank strip) sunset mirage
Taken by Mila Zinkova on September 8, 2016 @
San Francisco, California, USA
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On October 8 just before the sunset the horizon looked as an orange wall filled with something that looked as abstract paintings. Here's a video I filmed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ht0WPw9_24 "The wall" is a duct and "the paintings" is mirage of the sea surface. But the real surprise came during the sunset. The sun has never appeared inside the duct. It was above it, and below it, but never inside. See for yourself. Here's a video I filmed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38rXMlcTIB4 OK, I'm seeing the sea surface mirage inside the duct, and the bright sun cannot penetrate it, but why. Dr. Andrew Young explains: "Because rays that are trapped in a duct cannot leave the Earth's atmosphere, an observer within the duct cannot see the Sun or other astronomical objects in a zone of the sky, containing the ducted rays, that is centered on the astronomical horizon. Instead, this strip of sky is filled with miraged images of distant terrestrial objects, if there are any in the duct."
I sent the video to Dr. Young. Here's what he writes:
"Yes -- a textbook example of Wegener's blank strip. The image beneath the
strip shows Wegener's "Nachspiegelung" (late mirage: late, in the sense
that it appears *after* the Sun seems to have "set" on the dark strip).
And of course the strip contains a superior mirage of some kind, with
images of terrestrial objects. (In this case, the sea surface.)
So this shows you were *in* the duct.
Here, at 2:08, you have something like what one observer described as
"flames shooting out of the top of the Sun". I hadn't seen such a good
example before -- thanks!
At 3:30, there are two complete images of the whole Sun, both very
compressed by the inversion. At about 5:40, the lower image begins to
shrink; so it is no longer a complete image of the whole Sun. During
this time, the ends of the flattened images are *not* green, because
they are images of the vertical sides of the solar disk. But around
6:50 to 7:10, we see some *red* flashes."
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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