the Fata Morgana phenomenon made ships float in the air

Britain has seen a week of many ups and downs over the coronavirus, and very little news has sidetracked public opinion. One of them is the appearance of the call “Morgana girl”, a very rare climatic phenomenon that produces mirages.

And in recent days, the confusion has reached its extreme as several ships appeared to be floating in the air due to this rare optical illusion.

Sightings, – very rare – have taken place in various parts of the UK, with the highest records in the coastal areas of Cornwall, Devon and Aberdeenshire. The last example was discovered by David Morris while walking through Gillan, near Falmouth, Devon.

Said he stayed “astonished and very perplexed” for the phenomenon that made it look like a red eyeliner was floating in the sky above water.

Earlier this week in Paignton, Devon, a picturesque coastal shot showed several liners appearing to be floating on the sea due to the phenomenon. And on Friday at Banff, Aberdeenshire, health and safety worker Colin McCallum spotted another ship that appeared to be flying and stopped to obtain video of the unusual sight before investigating the cause of the illusion.

What happened is the product of a known Fatamorgan phenomenon, a mirage created when the sun warms the atmosphere on land or at sea, creating a temperature gradient. A layer of warm air settles on top of a layer of cold air, causing the ship’s lumen to bend as it passes through airflow gaps.

It is a rare and complex mirage in which the horizontal and vertical distortion, inversion and elevation of objects occur in changing patterns. The phenomenon occurs on the surface of the water and is produced by the superposition of several layers of air of different refractive index.

The legend of Fata Morgana

The first time that the “fata Morgana” effect was recorded dated 1818, but after more than 200 years, it continues to surprise those who walk in coastal areas in some parts of the world.

An illusion named after a legendary witch of medieval literature. According to Jorge Olcina, director of the Laboratory of Climatology at the University of Alicante, “it is a mirage of great dimensions that originates in areas with thermal inversion, where the layers of warm-earth- and colder- air sailor- coincide “.

The name is linked to Morgana, the sister of King Arthur of medieval literature. It is said that was she a witch or a fairy, and this is where fata morgana (the fairy is fata in Italian) comes from, although there are also those who believe that the origin of the name of the mighty witch comes from mori-gena, which means “born of the sea “, and they link it to the sirens by the resemblance to the English name (marmoid). Remember that in classical mythology sirens attract sailors with their songs to lead them to certain death.

Various sources describe Morgana as Disciple of Merlin, and later as his rival. Seduce and bewitch Merlin with his beauty and magic. Morgana learns magic from Merlin and then uses it to harm Arthur’s Knights and Queen Guinevere.

In some legends, Morgana attempts to conspire against Arthur by stealing Excalibur’s sword and giving it to her beloved Sir Accolon to assassinate him. Arthur kills Accolon in a duel and retreats to a nearby convent. Morgana, enraged, reclaims the sword (which makes Arthur invincible) and throws it into the sea.

From there came the name of the mirage: browsers who encountered the deceptive visual effect thought it was a witchcraft or spell and named it after the character they knew from medieval literature: the fairy Morgana.

In the cinema, the character of Morgana was played by actresses of stature played by actresses of the stature of Helena Mirren, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green or Julianna Margulies.