View of "Marfa Mystery Lights" www.darack.com/refraction

Go to http://www.darack.com/refraction - images of superior mirages, including "hovering" lights above the horizon produced by a superior mirage.

This is a video made by writer / photographer Ed Darack during a magazine project for Weatherwise Magazine. The article discusses how atmospheric refraction causes car headlights to appear to glimmer, bounce around, and to generally look otherworldly in this fabled west Texas locale. The best examples of such phenomena involve the superior mirage and derivations, such as the fata morgana mirage. The much more common inferior ("water on blacktop") mirage is easily observed here. The video shows a view across approximately 20 miles of Mitchell Flat, toward Chinati Peak. Route 67 runs south from Marfa through the mountains surrounding Chinati Peak. Once vehicles traveling northbound on 67 crest the high point of that road, 5,422 feet above sea level, the lights can be seen, and of course, their paths toward a viewer are altered by passing through numerous layers of air of varying density and hence refractive indices, causing twinkling, bouncing, blooming, etc. This video also shows a view of car headlights traveling westbound toward Marfa after descending from Paisano Pass near the Marfa Lights observatory. The article, which was the cover article for the May / June 2008 issue of Weatherwise Magazine, is entitled "Unlocking the Atmospheric Secrets of the Marfa Mystery Lights." Another Marfa Lights article will be published by the same writer in the 2011 Weather Guide Calendar.
An important note: This was made with a relatively low quality video recorder. Among other problems, it did not have a manual focus, so some of the "blooming" seen here can be attributed to focus shift, as well, the imaging sensor may be responsible for some of the blooming.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Marfa
• Texas
• Marfa Mystery Lights
• Ghost Lights
• Refraction
• Atmospheric Refraction
• Mirage
• Inferior Mirage
• Ed Darack
• Marfa Lights
• Marfa Ghost Lights

[DecadeNow09]

why does not anyone go more near?

[hep48]

@IndiumBlue So arrogant. You've never been there, but you can tell people what they saw. Typical mortal.

[1800ghostdance]

head lights on the left, rear (red) lights on the right. The lights are from cars.

Pretty cool illusion though.

[PaTRoN112]

wow what is that at the end did they get that close to yoiu ???? that is crazy

[coperoper22]

just have to becarefull sometime it headlight coming down from the mountain but when when one shows up in your car when you watching you know it no headlight lol

[AlienshateU]

uh... these are spirits

[explorerSG1]

Excellent video capture.

[IndiumBlue]

Someone with a flashlight or a bike ever car trail lights. The other video showed a train LOL! Doesn't take a rocket scientist. The town founds its own tourist trap. about as real as the Loch Ness monster!

[l2Providence5138]

hey I've been here 5 times and going back in a few weeks actually. Yep...I'm addicted haha, I do have an excellent video I have to upload one of these days of them, or well someday. Nice vid. though, great quality ;) It's a real believer to see though, just not the same hearing about them 5/5!!

[user92126]

I've seen these lights before, at first I thought they where streetlight off in the distance until someone at the rest center said "oh is that what they look like?"