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When the air turns trickster

  • A long straight highway with a shimmering, water-like patch on the road in the distance under a hot sky.
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    Refraction wonders
    Looks like water, but it can be a trick of light ✨ Hot ground or sea can make a mirage appear when light bends through differently dense air and seems to turn back.
  • Strongly distorted shoreline with stretched, column-like vertical smearing along the horizon; a lighthouse stands on the right.
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    Refraction wonders
    Refraction can paint the horizon like a fantasy skyline 🏰 The book describes Fata Morgana as a deceptive sea reflection with pilasters, arches, castles, columns, and towers in natural colours.
  • A mountain hillside above a cloud bank with a human-shaped shadow projected onto mist, surrounded by a circular rainbow-like halo (glory).
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    Refraction wonders
    A mountain can cast a giant mystery on mist 🌈 The Spectre of the Brocken is named in the same family of atmospheric apparitions.
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    Refraction wonders
    Even a ship can seem to loom far bigger than it is 🚢 That is the same refraction story at sea: layers of air bend the light, and distance starts to deceive.

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