By Ash Ellis
We recently received a sighting report, taken by the witness on the morning of the 1st June 2022, who was travelling back from Norway, via the North Sea, on a cruise. They were near to Lerwick in the Shetland Islands when they took 5 photographs of the sun. Upon examining the photographs they spotted a blue orb (as they described it), which they hadn’t seen with the naked eye. Intrigued, they forwarded four of the images onto us to have a look at.
In this photo you can clearly see the blue orb they are referring to just above the horizon. If you are in the UFO community, on social media, in facebook groups etc you may see this type of image pretty often, as it does look pretty interesting if you haven’t seen it before and people will post them claiming to have an image of a UFO. It is, however, a simple case of lens flare. You can also tell by the type of lens flare that this was probably taken with an iPhone.
So, what actually IS lens flare?
Lens flare is an artefact caused by light hitting the camera’s sensor and scattering. When there is a source of bright light in an image, which could be the sun as we see here, or car headlights, or streetlights, anything that is bright really, we will commonly see a resulting lens flare.
You can just take my word for it, but if you’re not convinced, there is a simple exercise we can do to prove that it is indeed lens flare (although there will always be people out there who will not accept it despite the evidence in front of them).
First off, take a look at the positions. The lens flare is always at the exact opposite point of the image from the light source. To evidence this, we split the image into four equal quadrants.
The lens flare will always be in the opposite quadrant, in this case the sun is in the top right quadrant so the flare is in the bottom left.
The next thing we do is draw a straight line from the lens flare, through the direct centre of the image, follow it through and if it is lens flare, the line will pass through the light source.
Lets take another of the photos the witness sent us, with the orb in a different position. Note the sun is also in a different position and if we carry out both of the above exercises, you can see again that the flare is opposite to the sun, and the line passes through both of them.
I’m happy to close this case as lens flare based on this evidence. Also note that you can have multiple lens flare on one image if there are multiple light sources. We have seen images that witnesses have posted making claims of “fleets of alien craft” due to the multiple lights visible, such as this image below which made the newspapers despite just being lens flare from the car headlights and the streetlamps. Look closely and you can see how the formation of the objects line up with the bright lights in the image.
Lens flare can also appear in video, which you can identify as they will always move with the camera. Don’t forget to look out for fakers too, if you see similar objects in photographs where there is no obvious light source, the image may have been edited to crop out the light so that the person posting it can “defend” against claims of lens flare.
I hope this Lens Flare 101 helps, and try the exercises out for yourself next time you seen an image like this posted. You can also make your own “UFO photo” by heading outside when the sun is bright and creating a deliberate lens flare, which is a photography art form in its own right!
