Sinking Ship Effect Caused By Refraction

Work in Progress

Skunkbay Timelapse
Below are high resolution versions of the available Skunk Bay peninsula scenes. The distant island is at times visible and invisible.

09/07/12 Timelapse On this day there was a mixture of sunken and visible effects

09/06/12 Timelapse On this day the peninsula was sunken throughout most of the day

09/01/12 Timelapse On this day the peninsula was visible throughout most of the day

What we learn:

- The sinking effect can happen for long periods of time over a single day

- The sinking effect is seen to happen repeatedly over multiple days, in all available timelapses of that peninsula

- In the sunken version of the scene there is a light line bordering the waterline where it otherwise should not be

- In the sunken version the area above the light line is vertically compressed

- The line of compression is visible when the peninsula is front-lit, and is not visible when it is later in the day and the peninsula is darker and back-lit

- An inferior mirage is seen to compress and decompress from the light line

Cause: Inferior Mirage
Increasing Altitude Reveals Additional Area

Diagram

Modified Diagram

Other Resources
Mirages in a Bottle Link to Paper

Abstract: "A simple experiment is presented to visualize inferior and superior mirages in the laboratory. A quantitative analysis is done using ray tracing with both photographic and computational techniques. The mirage's image, as seen by the eye or the camera lens, can be used to analyze the deflection and inversion of light rays."