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Comment by injb | Hacker News Reader

But why does the ship appear in that location, and not the water it's sitting on? What's special about the ship?

I think the explanation in the article is incorrect. This looks more like a false horizon caused by reflection of the fog on the water, rather than a mirage.

There is fog out past the ship. The water close to the viewer is reflecting the sky, and is blue, while water further out is reflecting the fog. The fog above the horizon blends in with the water reflecting the fog making it hard to see the true horizon line (but it is there in the picture if you look closely). The line where this reflection changes stands out much more strongly and the eye mistakes it for the horizon line.

This page has more examples of cases where these two different effects were confused: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-fata-morgana-or-mi...

I think you're right. I've seen Fata Morgana and it looks nothing like this. With atmospheric ducting you get (even more) surreal images, with all kinds of distortion and mirroring. If you've ever driven through salt flats and seen floating, horizontally symmetric mountains, you'll know what I mean. Look more closely at these pictures and you'll see that the fog and the true horizon are indeed visible.

As far as I can tell, it’s just a lucky coincidence that the distortion “cropped out” the water in this case, causing an exceptionally clean illusion. Compare with other images of fata Morgana[1] and you can see how it tends to look more distorted.

1: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fata+morgana&iax=images&ia=images

From your link I found this picture of 3 flying ships.

https://i0.wp.com/www.astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/20...

I can feel my brain contorting a bit.

But again with these 3 ships why is it only the ships themselves being precisely cropped out and not even small remnants of the immediately surrounding water?

They aren’t cropped. They are sitting in fog. The fog is the same color as the sky and there is no backdrop to see through the fog other than the ships. In other words, anything in the fog would be “floating”.

indeed the real horizon line is apparent on the right of the picture

As near as I can tell from the wikipedia link in the comments below, it's because the ship is perpendicular to the water and the light just happens to be being refracted to that particular observer right at the water line.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)#/media/F...

It's not a Fata Morgana or a superior mirage. It's a false horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1mh90wN-k

The ship is higher up than the water it is floating on.

You don’t see the keel of the ship, but only parts of it that are above the waterline, and not all of those (corollary: this ship is as good as empty)

Less impressive versions of this would show only the top of the bridge, or the entire ship and some of the water it’s floating on (actually, this image might show some water below the ship. That tiny whitish line below it could be that)

I wouldn’t be surprised to discover the photographer had to adjust their position to capture just the ship

The ship is over the horizon but a fiber optic effect caused by inverted thermals projects the ship into the sky for the distant observer.

Look close and you can dimly see water surrounding the ship above the horizon too, but it is much more faint than the water which you can see below the horizon.

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