The majestic picture shows an upside-down city peeping from beneath the clouds. If you look close enough into the halo-like, warm yellow light under the clouds you’ll be able to see vertical structures that resemble buildings.
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This whimsical image was captured by photographer Mark Hersch while he was traveling on an airplane hovering over Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in 2014.
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Scientists Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnel took to the official site of NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of The Day to decode the mind-twisting phenomena of the picture in detail:
How could that city be upside-down? The city, Chicago, was actually perfectly right-side up. The long shadows it projected onto nearby Lake Michigan near sunset, however, when seen in reflection, made the buildings appear inverted.
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The Sun can be seen both above and below the cloud deck, with the latter reflected in the calm lake. As a bonus, if you look really closely – and this is quite a challenge – you can find another airplane in the image, likely also on approach to the same airport.
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Well, all I could understand from the explanation is that this image might be an inverted reflection of the city of Chicago. Whatever said and done, it did take my breath away.