A large cargo ship appeared to be ‘flying’ through the sky in Cornwall last week.
Visitors to the coastal village of Coverack in Cornwall were left flummoxed by the strange sight.
Photographer Martin Stroud snapped a photo of the ‘floating vessel’ and posted it in the Coverack Life Facebook page.
He wrote: ‘Almost looks like it’s flying! Beautiful day for a visit to Coverack.’
‘It’s freakin’ me out,’ commented one resident.
‘Looks like boat is in the sky’ added another.
The ‘flying boat’ emerged to be the result of a rare mirage, usually only seen in the Arctic.
Specifically known as the ‘superior mirage’ or the ‘fata morgana’ mirage, it is caused when the sun heats up the atmosphere above the land or ocean, which creates a gradient of temperatures.
When light hits a boundary between the two layers that are different temperatures – and consequently different densities – it bends and travels at a different angle.
That in turn creates a floating effect for anything on the horizon.
Such a phenomenon has in fact seen before in Cornwall, with different explanations given.
In 2017, Rosie Patterson in Porthleven captured what appeared to be a ‘flying’ container off the coast of the port.
At the time it was explained as a rare state of conditions, in which the sea in the foreground of the picture was choppy, with waves, while further back out to sea where the ship was anchored the water was calm and mirror-flat.
This created the illusion of the ship apparently sitting in the sky, with the horizon line placed along top of the choppy water.
However, when a similar image was captured by David Morris at Gillan Cove back in March last year, the ‘superior mirage’ was again attributed to it.
At that time BBC meteorologist David Braine explained it was very common in the Arctic but happened only ‘very rarely’ in the UK.
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