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Mirage
A mirage is a naturally-occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French ''(se) mirer'', from the Latin ''mirari'', meaning "to look at, to wonder at". Mirages can be categorized as "inferior" (meaning lower), "superior" (meaning higher) and " Fata Morgana", one kind of superior mirage consisting of a series of unusually elaborate, vertically stacked images, which form one rapidly-changing mirage. In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water. Inferior mirage In an inferior mirage, the mirage im ...
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Fata Morgana (mirage)
A () is a complex form of Mirage#Superior mirage, superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The term ''Fata Morgana'' is the Italian translation of "Morgan the Fairy" (Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend). These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic. Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable. A Fata Morgana may be seen at sea or on land, in polar regions, or in deserts. It may involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands, and the coastline. Often, a Fata Morgana changes rapidly. The mirage comprises several inverted (upside down) and upright images stacked on top of one another. Fata Morgana mirages also show alternating compressed and stretched zones.
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Looming And Similar Refraction Phenomena
While mirages are the best known atmospheric refraction phenomena, looming and similar refraction phenomena do not produce mirages. Mirages show an extra image or images of the miraged object, while looming, towering, stooping, and sinking do not. No inverted image is present in those phenomena either. Depending on atmospheric conditions, the objects can appear to be elevated or lowered, stretched or stooped. These phenomena can occur together, changing the appearance of different parts of the objects in different ways. Sometimes these phenomena can occur together with a true mirage. Looming Looming is the most noticeable and most often observed of these refraction phenomena. It is an abnormally large refraction of the object that increases the apparent elevation of the distant objects and sometimes allows an observer to see objects that are located below the horizon under normal conditions. One of the most famous looming observations was made by William Latham, F.R.S., William Lat ...
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Refraction
In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one transmission medium, medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but other waves such as sound waves and Wind wave, water waves also experience refraction. How much a wave is refracted is determined by the change in wave speed and the initial direction of wave propagation relative to the direction of change in speed. Optical Prism (optics), prisms and Lens (optics), lenses use refraction to redirect light, as does the human eye. The refractive index of materials varies with the wavelength of light,R. Paschotta, article ochromatic dispersion in th, accessed on 2014-09-08 and thus the angle of the refraction also varies correspondingly. This is called dispersion (optics), dispersion and causes prism (optics), prisms and rainbows to divide white light into its constituent spectral ...
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Grand Traverse Bay
Grand Traverse Bay ( ) is an arm of Lake Michigan, located along the west coast of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The bay is separated from the rest of Lake Michigan by the Leelanau Peninsula. The bay is some long, ranges from wide, and up to deep in spots. It is the second-largest bay of Lake Michigan, behind Green Bay. Grand Traverse Bay is further divided into an East Arm and West Arm by the Old Mission Peninsula. At the head of both arms of the bay is Traverse City, the largest city in Northern Michigan. The area surrounding the bay is renowned for its fruit production, especially for cherries and viticulture. The bay is located within parts of the Michigan counties of Antrim, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse, and Leelanau. Etymology Grand Traverse Bay earned its name from 18th-century French voyageurs who made ', or "the long crossing", across the mouth of bay. The area was owned by the French, followed by Great Britain as the Province of Quebec. After 1776, ...
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Farallon Islands At Inferior Mirage No Mirage And Superior Mirage
Farallon (Farallón meaning cliff in the Spanish Language) may refer to: Places Northern Mariana Islands * Farallon de Medinilla, small island in the Northern Mariana Islands chain * Farallon de Pajaros (Birds Rock), the northernmost island in the Northern Mariana Islands chain *Farallon de Torres, a former name of Zealandia Bank in the Northern Mariana Islands chain California * Farallon Island Light, lighthouse on Southeast Farallon Island, California * Farallon Islands, group of islands and rocks in the Gulf of the Farallones, off the coast of San Francisco, California, USA ** Farallon Steamship Disaster, wooden steamship hit Black Reef in the Farallon Islands in 1910 and sank in Alaska Panama * Farallon (island), Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, an ...
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Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, Indiana and Illinois to the southwest, Ohio to the southeast, and the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario to the east, northeast and north. With a population of 10.14 million and an area of , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 10th-largest state by population, the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 11th-largest by area, and the largest by total area east of the Mississippi River.''i.e.'', including water that is part of state territory. Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia is the largest state by land area alone east of the Mississippi and Michigan the second-largest. The state capital is Lansing, Michigan, Lansing, while its most populous city is Detroit. The Metro Detroit r ...
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Angular Diameter
The angular diameter, angular size, apparent diameter, or apparent size is an angular separation (in units of angle) describing how large a sphere or circle appears from a given point of view. In the vision sciences, it is called the ''visual angle'', and in optics, it is the ''angular aperture'' (of a lens (optics), lens). The angular diameter can alternatively be thought of as the angular displacement through which an eye or camera must rotate to look from one side of an apparent circle to the opposite side. A person can Angular resolution, resolve with their naked eyes diameters down to about 1 arcminute (approximately 0.017° or 0.0003 radians). This corresponds to 0.3 m at a 1 km distance, or to perceiving Venus as a disk under optimal conditions. Formulation The angular diameter of a circle whose plane is perpendicular to the displacement vector between the point of view and the center of said circle can be calculated using the formula :\delta = 2\arctan ...
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Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located primarily in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada, with small portions extending into Arizona and Utah. The Mojave Desert, together with the Sonoran Desert, Sonoran, Chihuahuan Desert, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin Desert, Great Basin deserts, form a larger List of North American deserts, North American desert. Of these, the Mojave is the smallest and driest. It displays typical basin and range topography, generally having a pattern of a series of parallel mountain ranges and valleys. It is also the site of Death Valley, which is the lowest elevation in North America. The Mojave Desert is often colloquially called the "high desert", as most of it lies between . It supports a diversity of flora and fauna. The desert supports a numb ...
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Spring (season)
Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of the term varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. When it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. At the spring equinox, also called the vernal equinox, Daytime (astronomy), days and nights are approximately twelve hours long, with daytime length increasing and nighttime length decreasing as the season progresses until the summer solstice. The spring equinox is in March in the Northern Hemisphere and in September in the Southern Hemisphere, while the summer solstice is in June in the Northern Hemisphere and in December in the Southern Hemisphere. Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. Subtropical and tropical areas have climates better described ...
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Asphalt Concrete
Asphalt concrete (commonly called asphalt, blacktop, or pavement in North America, and Tarmacadam, tarmac or bitumen macadam in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) is a composite material commonly used to surface road surface, roads, parking lots, airports, and the core of embankment dams. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the nineteenth century. It consists of Construction aggregate, mineral aggregate Binder (material), bound together with bitumen (a substance also independently known as asphalt, Pitch (resin), pitch, or tar), laid in layers, and compacted. The American English terms ''asphalt'' (or ''asphaltic'') ''concrete'', ''bituminous asphalt concrete'', and ''bituminous mixture'' are typically used only in engineering and construction documents, which define concrete as any composite material composed of mineral aggregate adhered with a binder. The abbreviation, ''AC'', is sometimes used for ''asphalt concrete'' but can also denot ...
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Exhaust Gas
Exhaust gas or flue gas is emitted as a result of the combustion of fuels such as natural gas, gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, fuel oil, biodiesel blends, or coal. According to the type of engine, it is discharged into the atmosphere through an exhaust pipe, flue gas stack, or propelling nozzle. It often disperses downwind in a pattern called an ''exhaust plume''. It is a major component of motor vehicle emissions (and from stationary internal combustion engines), which can also include crankcase blow-by and evaporation of unused gasoline. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is estimated to kill over 5 million people each year. Motor vehicle emissions are a common source of air pollution and are a major ingredient in the creation of smog in some large cities. Composition The largest part of most combustion gas is nitrogen (N2), water vapor (H2O) (except with pure-carbon fuels), and carbon dioxide (CO2) (except for fuels without carbon); these are not toxic or noxiou ...
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Air Mass (astronomy)
In astronomy, air mass or airmass is a measure of the amount of air along the line of sight when observing a star or other celestial source from below Earth's atmosphere . It is formulated as the integral of air density along the ray (optics), light ray. As it penetrates the atmosphere, light is attenuated by light scattering by particles, scattering and absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption; the thicker atmosphere through which it passes, the greater the attenuation. Consequently, astronomical object, celestial bodies when nearer the horizon appear less bright than when nearer the zenith. This attenuation, known as extinction (astronomy)#Atmospheric extinction, atmospheric extinction, is described quantitatively by the Beer–Lambert law. "Air mass" normally indicates ''relative air mass'', the ratio of absolute air masses (as defined above) at oblique incidence relative to that at zenith. So, by definition, the relative air mass at the zenith is 1. Air mass increas ...
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