Can someone explain what I just caught on camera but did not see?

Here are the pics of the area during daylight (about 20 minutes ago.

A street lamp perhaps???

I thought about that too. But the street is not lit. There are overhead electric cables running the length of the street, but no lights installed. This is a rural area. I'll zoom in on the street and post that pic.

Honestly the first thing I thought was street light.

Still.....

I don't know where the light would have come from. But I am learning a lot about photobucket, and transferring images here.

[edit on 8-6-2008 by darkhorsebet]

There is a known celestial object which often times appears to be orbiting the moon. I forget what it is, and I'm too tired to look it up for you.

Also, look up "knifeedge effect" about light wrapping the "corner" of the moon onto the dark side.

The first pictures you posted of the object was at night and dont tell the wholer story.What was the weather outside the pictures like?Was it clear,raining,cloudy?

It was very clear in the area where I photographed. I don't recall noticing clouds anywhere else, but it was dark, and I don't really recall looking at the sky specifically at any point other than when I noticed the odd bright moon.

I was going to go out tonight and try to catch a lens flare if that is what this is but it is storming and cloudy. I'll try later this week. I'd give it up as lens but internos decided not to make a conclusion on that so . . .

I am a big moon watcher, and the only other time I've seen it look like that was during a partial eclipse. I guess I'd like to know for sure if I can. I have been leaning toward a rational explanation but it was truly an odd sky.

reply to post by darkhorsebet


well if you didn't see the object at first why is it that you captured the moon to the right of the screen and the object "appeared" to just turn up on the left side.

Originally posted by darkhorsebet
I thought about that too. But the street is not lit. There are overhead electric cables running the length of the street, but no lights installed. This is a rural area. I'll zoom in on the street and post that pic.

Maybe I misunderstand this post, but there is certainly a streetlight in the original photos you posted on YouTube (glowing very brightly in the lower right of the image). It looks like it could be the light in the parking lot that you show in those daytime pictures of that area. It is this lamp that I think could have potentially caused lens flare.

[edit on 6/13/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

I've enlarged the image and increased the brightness a bit. You can see that the green more evenly lights up the center of the object. Sometimes gasses in light bulbs can also look green on photos.

My guess is a street light, but I would love to be wrong.

There are no lights on that street. There are only lights in the parking lot where the photos were taken, including the one I photod on the lower right to show perspective in terms of where the moon was in the sky. See the google images above - the street is lined with electric overhead wire poles only. The area is rural. You can also google the area to see how rural it is.

If it were a streetlight, that would have to be one very very tall streetlight, given I was taking pics of the moon which is pretty high in the sky and the object is well above the moon itself. Also, why didn't a streetlight show up in the other pics I took, and why couldn't I see it myself?

I'm leaning more toward lens flare. The object did not appear in the photo where I moved away from the parking lot lamp, putting it farther out of the frame, and so farther away from the camera lens.

Edited to add: internos looked at the photos and said he saw support for lens flare, but couldn't conclude it was lens flare. I defer to his opinion, of course, since I don't have any expertise in photo analysis. I would like to think it is lens flare. I prefer that to the idea that there was a craft that I could not even see (or maybe didn't notice).

[edit on 13-6-2008 by darkhorsebet]

[edit on 13-6-2008 by darkhorsebet]

Yes I do...

This is the last lunar eclipse. I saw it for myself. The green light on left probably is a street lamp.

Am I right?

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
Yes I do...

This is the last lunar eclipse. I saw it for myself. The green light on left probably is a street lamp.

Am I right?

No The green light on the lower right is a street lamp (in the parking lot). This was not an eclipse. And no other lights are in the frame. You see that in one pic of the same moon a small distance from the lamp, there is no light at all. I think if it were a streetlight, it would be in all the pics.