A mirage in New Mexico.

Imagine yourself driving along a straight, 2-lane highway on a hot, sunny, summer afternoon. The car ahead of you is moving just a little too slowly, so you take a look into the oncoming traffic lane and you decide that it is safe to pass. But as you cross over into the lane of oncoming traffic, another car appears, seemingly out of nowhere. Though you are surprised by the sudden appearance of the other vehicle, you have enough time to get back into your own lane-- perhaps a bit unnerved but otherwise no worse off. But you can't help but wonder why you didn't see that car before you started to pass. Were your eyes playing tricks on you? Or perhaps the visibility was not as great as you thought it was.

The answer could very well be that the atmosphere altered the path of the visible radiation reflected off the oncoming car so that the rays were deflected away from your eyes, and that it was not until you got sufficiently close to the vehicle that the light was able to meet with your eyes. Sometimes the atmosphere can indeed make objects appear to be in a different position from where they really are or even alter their appearance entirely.

This final chapter describes the processes by which the atmosphere affects the path of visible radiation passing through it and the resultant images we see. We refer to these topics collectively as atmospheric optics.

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