What are the weird photos that are taken of UFOs near the Sun?

The photos in question can be found at this site.The method they use is to artificially block the solar disk, but then point their camera as close to the sun's limb as they can. They note that they ignore any 'solar flare' features in the deep corona of the sun...a precaution that is irrelevant because a broad-band camera will never see any solar details near the surface or in the corona this way.

I have used cameras, especially video cameras, under a variety of lighting conditions, and my first reaction to their 'evidence' is that what they are seeing when the flood their camera with light in this way is internal reflection inside the lenses and the CCD chip in their camera! This is not a theory, but is a real problem that every photographer has encountered when photographing scenes close to the sun, or having the camera pointed with the solar disk just out of the field of view. Scattered light from the sun at these angles can reverberate inside the lens system and produce multiple reflections off of dust, sharp optical edges of mirrors, etc. The shapes are never round but are often geometric in shape, ovals, stars, ellipses, rings.

The UFOs reported at the above web site are created under ideal conditions of lighting, not to bring out the best details of a purported UFO, but to bring out the worst aberrations in a video camera or film camera optical system.

Return to Ask the Astronomer