In Yeysk, a coastal town in Krasnodar Territory, observers reported ships moving across the sky above the Black Sea. A video later circulated on the telegraph channel known as “Eysk overheard.”
The footage shows two distant vessels appearing to hover above the water’s surface. This striking illusion is explained by a rare optical effect called a fata morgana, named after the mythical sorceress Fairy Morgana from English folklore.
A fata morgana emerges when multiple layers of air with different densities form in the lower atmosphere. Temperature differences between these layers bend light in unusual ways, creating mirror-like reflections. As light rays refract and reflect, real objects near the horizon can appear distorted, stretched, or elevated, producing images that seem to float above the sea or vanish and reappear unexpectedly.
During certain atmospheric conditions, this phenomenon can stretch, tilt, or duplicate objects, making ships in the distance look as though they are suspended in the air. The effect is most dramatic when a warm layer sits above a cooler one, bending light downward and upward in optical pathways that confuse the eye. It is a reminder that our perception of distance and height can be dramatically altered by the atmosphere’s invisible choreography.
The term fata morgana carries a touch of romance and mystery, drawing a parallel between natural optical quirks and legends of enchantment. The name evokes the sense that the world can conjure images that feel almost supernatural, even when the science behind them is solid and well understood by meteorologists and researchers who study atmospheric lensing.
In the broader history of science, optical illusions have intrigued observers long before the modern era. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured dramatic visual phenomena in space that echo the same underlying physics of light bending and reflection, only in a celestial theater. In one notable instance, distant spiral galaxies appeared to be on a collision course, a perspective caused by gravitational lensing and light travel time rather than any actual collision. Such space-based observations highlight how light’s journey—through varying media and gravitational fields—can craft astonishing visuals that challenge everyday intuition. Through careful analysis, scientists separate coincidence from composition and reveal the mechanisms at work behind these captivating displays. (attribution: historical meteorology and space imaging records)”