Explanation:
How can the same Sun rise three times?
Last month on Friday, 2009 July 10, a spectacular
triple sunrise
was photographed at about 4:30 am over
Gdansk Bay in
Gdansk,
Poland.
Clearly, our Sun rises
only once.
Some optical effect is creating at least two
mirages of the Sun -- but which effect?
In the vast majority of similarly reported cases, mirages of the brightest object in the frame can be traced to reflections internal to the camera taking the images.
Still, the above image is intriguing because a
sincere photographer claims the effect was visible to the
unaided eye,
and because the photographer took
severalotherframes
that show variants of the same effect.
Therefore, polite readers are invited to
debate whether the above image
captures a particularly spectacular example of
common reflections inside a standard
digital camera, shows one of the most spectacular examples of
atmospheric lensing yet recorded,
or was caused by something
completely different.
If the
discussion converges, the consensus will be posted here at a later date.
digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090804.html'; digg_skin = 'compact';
