It was brilliantly sunny with a chilly east wind when I hiked at Schoodic Peninsula on the coast of Maine last Wednesday.  Little did I know the conditions were perfect for a superior mirage.

Schoodic is one of the endless procession of peninsulas and islands that reach into the Gulf of Maine east of Acadia National Park‘s Cadillac Mountain.  Though Schoodic is part of the park it takes an hour and a half to drive there around Frenchman Bay.

That day from the top of Schoodic Head the nearby islands and peninsulas were undistorted but on the horizon the land looked really odd.  One pink granite island was shaped like an hourglass and a peninsula looked sparsely tree-covered with a flat top.

This was a “superior mirage,” so called because the upside down images are above the real objects.  They are typical in cold water zones where the inversion of warm air above cold air distorts the light.  When very complex they’re called Fata Morgana, an Italian reference to the sorceress Morgan le Fay, because reality is distorted as if by magic.

Mirages are so common in the Arctic that explorers learned to be very careful before they labeled what they saw as solid land.  In 1818 Sir John Ross gave up pursuing the Northwest Passage when he saw mountains blocking Lancaster Sound.  He named them the Croker Mountains and headed back for England despite the protests of several of his officers including Edward Sabine (for whom the Sabine’s gull is named).  The mistake ruined Ross’ career. Eighty-eight years later Robert Peary thought he saw a distant land mass and named it Crocker Land.  It too was a mirage. Beware of naming anything in the Arctic with the letters C, R, O, K, E, R. It doesn’t turn out well.

Even spookier:  A re-examination of testimony surrounding the sinking of the Titanic indicates a mirage may have hidden the iceberg from the Titanic’s lookout and hidden the Titanic from the nearest rescue ship.  Click here for illustrations that show how this could happen.

Mirages change quickly so I was able to snap only one good image before it became less interesting. I was fascinated but not fooled.

(photo by Kate St. John)