The image of the ship “Achilleus” operating on the Skyros-Kimi-Skyros line, which was photographed by the Greek Nontas Kalogianis, has gone viral.
It looks like an edited photo because the big ship “floats” on the surface of the sea, so it is not surprising that it reminds people of a scene from video games or the famous movie “The Matrix”.
As unreal as it may seem, it is authentic and Kalogianis recorded a very complex mirage, reports dailystar.
Fata Morgana refers to the specific mirage that occurs due to the refraction of light through layers of air of different temperatures. These mirages often appear as distorted images or illusions, usually seen in deserts or over bodies of water.
For this reason, when conditions are ideal, objects such as ships, rocks, and even entire islands can appear, partly in the sky and partly in the sea.
BBC meteorologist David Brain adds that “superior mirages occur due to a weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it. “Because cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on land – or on shore, changing the appearance of a distant object.”
Otherwise, the scene from Greece is not the only one. Thus, at the beginning of 2021, a tanker was photographed “floating” on the surface of the sea, near the coast of British Cornwall.