Arizona republican., 1894-11-14
PICTURES IN THE SKY.
They Are Common Around the
 Lake Ontario Region.
A Surprising and Impressive Exhibition Recently Witnessed by the People of BuffaIo-A City
 in the Air

in the Air.
 The region about Buffalo and for a good many miles east of that city seems to be a favorable one for seeing the more distinct and remarkable effects of that optical illusion known as the mirage, says the Hartford Times A surprisingly distinct one was seen between nine and ten o'clock on recent morning by the people of Buffalo. Like a previous one, seen by the passengers in a New York Central train dozen miles or more east of Buffalo some years ago, the spectacle was at the north. The one seen from the cars showed Lake Ontario, with all it's capes and other shore features, including the trees, with remarkable distinctness in the sky, although the real lake at its nearest shore was thirty or forty miles away and wholly invisible. The one seen at Buffalo was the entire city of Toronto, in Canada, on the lake, some sixty miles away. Its steeples, docks and other features were seen, at great distance, with wonderful distinctness of detail. Even the steamers on the lake and a yacht were distinctly shown-the former pouring out the trailing smoke from their smokestacks, and the lat ter, showing exactly the position of the sails, could be seen careening before the west wind The lake itself was largely visible. It must have been a very surprising and impressive exhibi- tion.
 Seen in the sky by the caravan trav- elers on the desert, the mirage pre- sents an appearance of objects reflected in surface of water; cool lakes, with shady palm tress, mock the hot and thirst-stricken travellers The heated earth rarefes the lower air faster than 1t can ascend and escape. The air is denser overhead-contrary to the GUS tomary experience; and the fatness of the desert contributes to the duration Of the attra ctive but deceptive appari- tion. There must be some real lake, in some cases, as basis for these re- ported exhibitions. The mirage is caused by the excessive refraction, or bending of light rays in penetrating adjacent layers of air of greater differ ing densities, not far above the surface of the earth. This excessive refraction presents, when the lower stratum of air is heated by very hot sun, an up- lifted, distorted or inverted image of some Netual object or scene. Along certain portions of the Italian coast it sometimes produces the exhibition of an inverted ship, up in the air-the real ship being distant and invisible and, of course, right side up. These aerial and marine refec- tlons, often strange and complicated. and known as mirage, looming" and the Italian, ''fata morgana," according to the characteristics they present, are all allied to general law The school books have explained the general phe- nomenon. It is out of the usual course of things for the lower stratum of air to be rarer than the one above it, but it sometimes happens. Suppose the light rays are coming from distant land in- vlslble) object, situated in the denser stratum which in these wonderful ex- hlbltions lies over instead of being be- meath the rarefed stratum-as a hill a little above the earth's surface-the rays come in a direction nearly paral- Tel to the surface, and meet the lower. rarer medium at very obtuse angle. Instead of passing into that warmer ar, the rays are reflected back to the denser stratum above - the common surface of the two strata acting as a mirror. Let the spectator be looking from some eminence, at an object thus situated, like himself, in the denser air. and he will see it by directly transmit ted rays; but rays from it also will be redected-from the upper surface of | the lower, more heated air-presenting the image inverted and in a lower posi- l ton. In the reproduction of distant and invisible objects-as in the case of the city of Toronto, seen so plainly in the l sky sixty miles south, at Buffalo - the belongs, apparently, to the class known to sailors as looming"