Bright Superior Mirages

Superior mirages of unusual brightness are occasionally observed. Two such cases, photographed over the frozen surface of Lake Winnipeg, Canada, are documented. Visually, these mirages appear as featureless bright barriers far out on the lake. They are just images of the lake ice, yet the luminance in one case was 2.5 times (in the other, 1.7 times) the luminance of the ice surface in front of the mirage. The mirage itself can be modeled by means of a conduction inversion, but a proper explanation of the brightness is not yet available. [Optical Society of America ]