illusion

Tabloid media love to invoke the cool sounding "fata morgana" or "superior mirage" to explain images of things floating in the sky. The problem is that a real fata morgana superior mirage (above the boat) looks like this: An inferior mirage (under the boat) looks like this: In both cases...

Something that often happens when looking at contrails (or when people are looking for what they consider "chemtrails") is that a trail will pass though a thin region of cloud, and it's not clear if the trail is in front of the cloud (at a lower altitude), or if it is behind it (at a higher...