Atmospheric Mirage Ray-Bending Simulator

Most reported "UFO" sightings that aren't misidentified aircraft, satellites or planets turn out to be ordinary atmospheric optics — and the mirage family is one of the most persistent offenders. When air temperature changes rapidly with height, its refractive index changes with it, and light rays travelling near-horizontally curve continuously instead of going straight. This simulator applies Snell's law across a stack of temperature-gradient air layers to trace exactly how those rays bend, then reconstructs the distorted, stretched, inverted or multiplied "apparent image" an observer's eye would actually perceive — the same optics that turns a distant ship, cliff or the setting sun into a wavering, saucer-shaped or hovering light. Adjust the gradient, the layer resolution, distance and object size to see when a real object crosses from ordinary refraction into a full inferior, superior or Fata-Morgana-style mirage.