except the suns were seen with the naked eyes first, in multiple locations, and that brought it to the attention of the TV news
image on google earth
by bigmac 24 Replies latest jw friends
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Satanus
A mirage results from light passing through fairly large air masses of different pressures. They are usually close to the ground. However, if it happened further up in the atmosphere in front of the sun or moon, it could bend the light travelling through it and around it. Here is a bit more:
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"I doubt it's been computer modeled," he said. "There must have been some blob of atmosphere somewhere that caused this truly spectacular phenomenon, which in a sense is a mirage." [Amazing Sun Photos From Space]
Mirages appear when particles in the atmosphere refract, or bend, light. This typically happens near the horizon, where air is thicker, though, and mirages are usually aligned vertically above or below the original source of the light — not beside it, like in the video. It's possible, Kaler said, that an unusually thick patch of atmosphere wandered in front of the sun to create the unusual effect.
Previous sightings of horizontally-aligned double images of the sun and moon are recorded in a book called "Light and Color in the Outdoors" (English edition: Springer 1993) by the famous Flemish astronomer Marcel Minnaert, which remains the most complete reference on double suns. "So many other instances have been reported that there is no longer any doubt about ... observations of sun and mock sun(s) being at exactly the same altitude," Minnaert wrote.
"The case of a mock sun 3 degrees and 25 arc-seconds to the left of the nearly set sun sounds incredible but has been recorded photographically." Indeed, Minnaert's description sounds nearly identical to the scene in question.
He goes on to state that the double or multiple image phenomena are produced by abnormal refraction, but that "it remains extraordinary that the images of the sun and moon were sharp and of the same size as the real sun and moon."
To check whether more has been learned about the double sun effect since the time of Minnaert's writing, Life's Little Mysteries consulted several atmospheric optics experts. None of them had ever seen anything quite like the effect shown in the video.
"This is not a common optical phenomenon that we're seeing here," said Grant Perry, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Institute for Satellite and Meteorological Studies. "I'm asking myself if this is an artifact of the lens, but if that were the case — if it's reflections of the lens elements — then the images would move in relation to each other as the camera moves," Perry said. "But that doesn't happen."
In terms of an optical explanation, he said, "You would have to assume it is particles of ice or something in the atmosphere aligned in such a way that they would refract the sunlight at that very small angle, but only in one direction. It would require some fairly peculiar characteristics."'
See? Very unusual, but nothing extrareal.
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moshe
Speculations by all, but no proof, nor any scientifically vetted explanation that could be repeatable, by understanding the exact mechanism that caused the two suns image in the first place.
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Satanus
The mechanism is pretty simple. It's also well known. Of course, reproducing it is another story. I just noticed that it was a sunset, anyway, so there ya go. Here is the scientific book that they refer to. Guess that will kill the mystery, at least for a scientific mind. http://www.amazon.com/Light-Color-Outdoors/dp/0387979352
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John_Mann
Darth Vader and Little Prince.