Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Sunset Mirage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Sunset Mirage

Sunset MirageHere's how Andy Young (a mirage specialist his Green Flash page )comments the sunset: "The towering of the image (very great vertical stretching) is quite unusual in this sunset. The other noteworthy feature is the extreme gradient of extinction near the horizon. That indicates a very shallow haze layer -- most likely trapped by the inversion that produced the distortion of the image. The extinction effect shows up not only in the transmitted solar image, but in the brightness and color gradients in the sky. Notice how much darker and bluer (or grayer, anyway) it is near the horizon than a degree or two higher up."
Sunset MirageHere's how Andy Young (a mirage specialist his Green Flash page )comments the sunset: "The towering of the image (very great vertical stretching) is quite unusual in this sunset. The other noteworthy feature is the extreme gradient of extinction near the horizon. That indicates a very shallow haze layer -- most likely trapped by the inversion that produced the distortion of the image. The extinction effect shows up not only in the transmitted solar image, but in the brightness and color gradients in the sky. Notice how much darker and bluer (or grayer, anyway) it is near the horizon than a degree or two higher up."
Reason
The picture is showing a rare sunset mirage and has a strong encyclopedic value. The picture has big educational value too because most people have never seen such sunsets and do not know about mirages. The commentary for the picture was written by mirage specialist Andy Young.

The picture is very plesant to see and has a high resolution.

A reader could follow the sunset development from these pictures

San Francisco5/13/07#1
San Francisco5/13/07#2
San Francisco5/13/07#3
San Francisco5/13/07#4
San Francisco5/13/07#5
Articles this image appears in
Mirage
Creator
self-nom
  • Support as nominator — Mbz1 17:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose - fairly enc. for mirage, but there seems to be an enormous bird right in front of the most important part! Also, the overall image quality is low. This one is more illustrative, but also not FP material, IMO. --TotoBaggins 20:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - The picture quality is as good as it gets for such images. It is the original (no postprocessing at all) picture taken with Canon XTI.

One cannot compare the quality of, for example, macro picture with the quality of a mirage picture. Mirages are really hard to photograph, but it does not mean they cannot be posted as Picture of the Day. That particular mirage is very interesting and birds make it even more plesant to see. This one that you believe "is more illustrative" is different type of mirage. It is much more common Inferior Mirage. The mirage in the offered picture is Mock Mirage. It is much more rarer type of mirage. Mbz1 20:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Sorry Mbz1, but the image quality is not as good as it gets. I'm not saying the optical phenomenon is not impressive, but it is significantly out of focus. Nothing - the foreground, the sun, the birds - is sharp. I don't think anyone is saying that mirage images cannot be Picture of the Day. It is just that they need to meet certain requirements in order to do so, and I'm not convinced this image has the technical qualities necessary. It would also have been better if exposure settings were consistent in the sequence. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 22:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment -Diliff, can you, please, find any mock mirage sunset at the NET with the better or the same quality and give link to it here.

By the way exposure settings cannot be the same because as the sunset progresses and the sun is not so bright any more the exposure should be changed. Also I cannot agree with you about the focus. The sun and the birds are as much in focus as they could have been for such weather conditions and the visibility, when mirages are tend to happen. Once again there was no single picture selected as the Picture of the Day, which shows a mirage. Mirages are interesting and exiting to see and I hope many people will read about mirages after seeing the picture. Mbz1 22:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

    • I don't have to find better photos of the subject to justify my opposition. There are minimum requirements of photos, even if they are of a rare subject. Even if you took a blurred photo of an alien in a space ship outside your window, it probably still wouldn't make it to Featured Picture for that reason, although obviously it would attract a lot of attention. ;-). You may be right about the focus, but considering the birds and hills are not THAT far away (my guess is at most 100 metres) I can't see how it would be so blurry. Atmospheric distortion would increase relatively linearly with distance, I would have thought. I'm obviously not a "mirage expert" but I've taken my share of photos and I see a lack of focus more than any visibility issue. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose Birds distract from actual subject, as does the hill/cliff on left. Also, out of focus. Chris_huhtalk 07:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose shooting the sun is difficult, but you can get better results than this one. Here's a link to a photo coincidently taken with the same camera, which I found because you posed the challenge: Sunspot 930 in flare and at sunset. —Pengo 10:20, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose The two brighter shots at the end are really distracting because it appears that the sun is getting brighter as it sets, it isn't even obvious they are the same sun set. The focus is off as well. -Fcb981 14:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Hi, Pengo, Thank you for taking on my challenge. By the way the photo you pointed out Sunspot 930 in flare and at sunset is not only coincidently taken by the same camera, but it is also just coincidently is taken by the same photographer (by me), and just because it is taken by me and not by someone else, I'll tell that the picture is much worse than the one posted here not because of the quality, but because the mirage was not so complex.

In my opinion while the quality of the picture is important, but it is even more important to learn something new from a picture, and I hope that at least everyone, who opposes the picture, did learn something new. Mbz1 15:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

    • Well that does make me look silly. :) Thank you for contributing the photos all the same. —Pengo 14:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)