For a mirage to occur, is it necessary to have an object?
Answers
When appearing on roads due to the hot asphalt, it is often referred to as a highway mirage. Convection causes the temperature of the air to vary, and the variation between the hot air at the surface of the road and the denser cool air above it creates a gradient in the refractive index of the air.
Really, there is no need of an object
Answer:
A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky.[1] The word comes to English via the French (se) mirer, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at".[2]
Various kinds of mirages in one location taken over the course of six minutes, as not shown in chronological order. The uppermost inset frame shows an inferior mirage of the Farallon Islands. The second inset frame is the Farallon Islands with a green flash on the left-hand side. The two lower frames and the main frame all show superior mirages of the Farallon Islands. In these three frames, the superior mirages evolve from a 3-image mirage (an inverted image between two erect ones) to a 5-image mirage, and then back to a 2-image mirage. Such a display is consistent with a Fata Morgana. feet above sea level. The upper frame was photographed from sea level.
Mirages can be categorized as "inferior" (meaning lower), "superior" (meaning higher) and "Fata Morgana", one kind of superior mirage consisting of a series of unusually elaborate, vertically stacked images, which form one rapidly changing mirage.
In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.
Explanation: