The mirror formula itself comes from similar triangles set up by the incident and reflected rays at the mirror's pole and centre of curvature, and combining those triangle ratios gives \( \dfrac{1}{v} + \dfrac{1}{u} = \dfrac{1}{f} \).
Clearing fractions with a common denominator, \( \dfrac{u + v}{uv} = \dfrac{1}{f} \), so \[ v = \frac{uf}{u - f} \] With the object distance \( u = 15 \, \text{m} \), this expression gives the image distance \( v \) once the focal length \( f \) is substituted in.