Heat Haze
Heat haze, also called heat shimmer, refers to the distortive effect experienced when viewing objects through a layer of heated air, for example across hot asphalt or through the exhaust gases produced by jet engines.
Convection causes the temperature and hence the refractive index of the air to vary, and so a blurred shimmering effect is produced which affects the ability to resolve objects, the effect being increased when the image is magnified through a telescope or telephoto lens.
Heat Haze is not related to the atmospheric phenomenon of haze.
Read more about this topic: Mirage
Famous quotes containing the words heat and/or haze:
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Here is what sometimes happened to me: after spending the first part of the night at my desk—that part when night trudges heavily uphill—I would emerge from the trance of my task at the exact moment when night had reached the summit and was teetering on that crest, ready to roll down into the haze of dawn....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)