Unexplained Object In Cloud Photos

Upload your images | Login | FAQ | Contact the Webmaster | Home

Unexplained object in cloud photos
Taken by Steve Lochhaas on November 30, 2017 @ Rural Jersey County, Illinois

Click photo for larger image

Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: Unavailable

More images

Details:

While walking our rural Illinois lane on Nov. 30th, I snapped some pictures of interesting cloud formations with my cell phone. Yesterday when I backed them up to my computer, I noticed these 3 shots had some sort of object or artifact just above the treetops. Zooming in reveals a white disk marked longitudinally with a sigmoid line which moves from left to center of the disk in the frame sequence. There are also bright pinpoints of light which appear to change configuration from frame to frame. Referencing the treeline the object appears to move towards the center of the frame and then up slightly. I tried to contact Les Cowley with this but his webpage contact email address is no longer valid. Please help me identify this object.

Photographer's website:

No URL provided.

Comments

You must be logged in to comment.

Nothing special : artifact (reflexion of the sun). I think the bright pinpoints is created by the sensor of your camera.

Posted by pipones 2017-12-17 12:57:37

Darn, I was hoping for a UFO!

Posted by HP1954 2017-12-17 13:42:48

Thanks, pipones. I suspected camera optics and your take that the light specks are saturated pixels makes sense to me. The artifact would then appear to move as the lense angle changed slightly between frames. That explains everything but the bisecting dark line.
Anybody?

Posted by SteveLoc57 2017-12-17 14:44:50

By the looks of it Id guess it to be a water drop with a thread of lint or hair, the bright spots are likely air bubbles or may instead be a clear soda with carbonation A water drop acts like a lense in itself and would likely focus and enlarge any debris inside the drop, I noticed also that if you click rapidly between shots that the object pans along the same vertical axis as the phone.

Posted by Skyfall 2017-12-17 22:24:38

Lens flare (of your camera). It appears point-symmetrically from too bright object (the sun in this case) with respect to the center of the view field.
It moves frame by frame due to the angle change of your camera.
And, I think the bisecting dark line is due to a branch of the trees. One of branches faces in front of the sun disk, I think. Sun is too bright to recognize the obscuration, but if something obscures the light source, the corresponding lens flare becomes the same shape. For example, at an annular solar eclipse, the lens flare by the sun becomes annular.

Posted by shiram 2017-12-18 06:55:39

previous | next

Home | FAQ | Contact the Webmaster