On the Possibility of non-Line-of-Sight Imaging and Laser Beam Projection by Optical “Ducting” in Atmospheric Temperature Inversions

Anecdotal reports of visible image formation in situations where a direct line of sight is not available lead us to investigate whether meteorological conditions could give rise to atmsopheric index of refraction gradients where ray paths would allow propagation from an object to an observer over the horizon from each other. We investigate this possibility by tracing rays through three dimensional temperature distributions predicted from meteorological data.