Whitley Streiber’s Web site, a repository of silly pseudoscience and conspiracy nuttiness, has the following photoessay on alleged “spheres” sppearing around some guy’s house:
http://www.whitleysworld.com/news092200a.html
These spheres only appear when a picture is taken. They sure look like reflections on the camera lens to me. Anyone who knows a lot about photography want to explain these away?
Not only do those look digitally modified, but they look badly digitally modified. Like someone selected a circle in Photoshop and hit “Lighten” a few times.
LL
You could never really “prove” any of these things based on a low-res image on a website, but #1 and #4 look very much like a droplet of water on a clear panel in front of the camera. Number two looks like someone is shining a flashlight at the white wall in the background. Number three looks like the neighbor kid just missed what would have been a satisfying plunking of two certifiable wackos with a bottle rocket.
Any of these things could have come out of a cheap one-use camera being fired at random in any backyard. I really have no serious debunking to add but thanks for a good laugh, I was having a rough day.
Oh, of course.
God this is rich.
I’m no UFO buff, but the pics look suspiciously like a Frisbee to me. Probably hung by fish line. They are both next to the house. Why are none of these pictures ever taken in the daylight? Hmm.
They don’t look solid, though. If you examine the first two you can see some of the background through them. Pay special attention to the right edge of the “object” and you can see background through it.
I think they’re just refractions on the camera lens, but I may just be saying that because I’ve seen other sightings debunked that way. I don’t know the first thing about photography, however, which is why I’m asking. As Stolichnaya points out, the second one really does look like a flashlight beam.
The second two just look like the moon behind clouds. Call me crazy, but when I see a white shiny thing in the night sky, I’m usually inclined to think it might have something to do with the gigantic 3000-mile-wide rock that orbits the Earth.
You could drive these guys bananas for months by just moving in across the street and buying a laser pointer.
They have to be real. The guy has them on film for crying out loud. :rolleyes:
in the first photo, he had to copywrite his creation…I mean documentation :rolleyes:
I’m a photographer by profession, and damned if these things don’t just look like some sort of incidental lens flare.
Ever seen a photograph or video that has the sun or (some other really bright light) in it? It tends to result in lens flare. That is, you’ll one or more ghostly mirror images through the picture, caused by reflections of said bright light off the different glass elements in the lens. And that’s exactly what #1, #2, and #4 look like, albeit a bit, uh, “enhanced”.
Usually these effects only manifest themselves if the sun/light is actually in the picture, but this isn’t always the case; the light source needs merely to be shining directly on the lens for it to happen, even if it’s not actually in the picture. So it’s not too hard to imagine someone standing just outside the picture holding a halogen light or something while his buddy snaps away, and then, “golly gee! lookit the UFO we caught!” Especially since the pixellation in the first two images make them seem cropped, either to remove the light source, or to make the flare look bigger.
The “UFO” or whatever in #3, however, looks different…it’s more comet-shaped than circular, like the other two. It’d bet ten dollars it’s merely an out-of-focus bug or raindrop flying close to the camera that got completely overexposed when the flash went off, and blurred because it’s in the foreground. I’ve taken flash photos at night in the rain/snow before and gotten effects just like this…maybe I should dig them out and call Hard Copy. ::rolleyes::
Oh shit… the aliens have frisbees now? We’re screwed.
I once had a computer booth at the San Jose TNT fair.
The guy 2 booths over was “taking photos of your aura”.
It was so phoney we were all laughing, but he was sucking in $10 a polaroid. He had different colored painted gels that he would put in front of the lens, where they would photograph out-of-focus in the print.
He pretended the (obviously regular) polaroid camera was being “controlled” by a “computer”. We had to go over and look. The multicolored-multi-strand wires from camera to “computer” were not even connected! He had just covered the cut ends with duct tape where they would have entered.
The “computer” power cord ran behind the curtain, where it was discovered to be unplugged.
A cop came by at one point and the booth guy convinced him it was an obvious “gag gift”. This remark lost him a couple potential customers, but in minutes fresh suckers arrived with $10 in hand and amazement on their faces.
P.T. Barnum would have been proud.
Strangely, the pictures do not load in Netscape, only in Internet Explorer.
The guy said he had recorded the “spheres” in motion, but he fails to mention at what speed they move. Let me hazard a guess: they move at the same speed as falling water droplets or flying insects.
I am always suprised at how people can somehow use an inverse version of Occam’s Razor and come up with the most implausible explanations for simple phenomenon. The objects are simply an out of focus object close to the camera with excessive illumination from the flash. This phenomenon is well known to anyone who has ever taken a flash photo while snow is falling. This guy lives in San Antonio and has probably never had this experience.