Glowing orbs in photos? Dust, moisture or raindrops lit by the flash

7 min read

You take a photo in the evening in a room, in the garden or in an old building, and translucent, glowing spheres float in the picture that no one saw with the naked eye. These are often shown online as ghosts, energy orbs or UFOs, but photographers have long known the phenomenon: the light of the flash reflects off dust, moisture, raindrops or insects floating right next to the lens. We show you how to recognize it, why these images are so convincing, and how you can check what your camera recorded.

What is an orb?

Orb is an English word meaning sphere. In photography, the term refers to round, glowing spots that appear in a picture but that no one actually saw in reality. The photographers' technical term for it is backscatter: the light of the flash, a lamp or a night-vision camera's infrared illumination reflects directly back into the camera from tiny particles floating in front of the lens.

The particle itself can be a speck of dust, pollen, a water droplet forming mist, a raindrop, a snowflake or a tiny insect. In the dark these are invisible to the naked eye, but the flash lights them up strongly for an instant. Because they are very close to the lens, well within the focusing distance, the camera records them not as sharp points but as large, blurred, round spots. The same effect turns out-of-focus background lights into round spots, which photographers know as bokeh.

Why phones and compact cameras in particular?

The phenomenon became widespread with the spread of digital cameras and mobile phones. In these, the flash or LED light source is just a few millimeters from the lens, so the light reflected from the illuminated particle arrives almost straight into the lens. With large cameras using a separate flash this angle is larger, and orbs appear much less often.

The dust floats not on the lens but in front of it, in the air, so wiping the lens does not help. Where there is a lot of dust (an old, dusty building, attic, cellar, a room full of people) or high humidity (fog, rain, snowfall, waterside), a single click can put even a dozen orbs in the picture.

Why does the orb appear in the flash photo? The flash illuminates a dust particle floating right next to the lens, which ends up in the picture as an out-of-focus, round spot. With an external flash, because of the larger angle, the reflected light barely reaches the lens. Sky Glitch chart

What does it look like?

Round and translucent, often with the background showing through it.
Whitish, bluish, yellowish or with a rainbow-colored edge, due to the lens's chromatic aberrations.
Often patterned inside: a blotchy, ringed or „cell-like” pattern, in which many people see a face or a structure.
Not always a perfect circle. If the camera's aperture closes down further, the orb can also be polygonal or triangular, following the shape of the aperture blades.
Appears only in flash or infrared-illuminated images, and in the next picture it is already somewhere else, or it disappears altogether.
With raindrops and snowflakes it often appears as an elongated, comet-like streak, because the particle moves during the exposure.

Why is it misleading?

It was invisible at the scene. The fact that no one saw it is exactly what makes it mysterious, yet this is the orb's main telltale sign: only the camera „sees” it, because it only glows in the momentary light of the flash.
It looks large and distant. In the photo it seems as if a large sphere were floating in the middle of the room or among the trees, when in reality it is a speck of dust that was a few centimeters from the lens.
The pattern. The inner rings and blotches come from the lens optics and digital compression, but our eyes readily see a face or a structure in them.
It „moves” on video. On footage from night-vision security cameras and trail cameras, dust drifting with air currents or a flying insect looks like a ball of light darting about purposefully.
The location. In buildings considered haunted, in cemeteries and on „ghost hunting” tours, many people are expecting exactly this kind of phenomenon, and the air in these places is often dusty and damp as well.

Orb or a real light in the sky?

A real sky phenomenon (star, planet, satellite, airplane, sky lantern) is also visible to the naked eye, the observer can follow it for a longer time, and it moves along a consistent path across several consecutive pictures or in a video. The orb, by contrast, almost always appears in only a single flash photo or in the infrared light of a night-vision camera.

The other common photographic trap is lens flare. It occurs when a strong light source (the sun, a streetlight, a spotlight) is in the picture or at its edge and reflects inside the lens. Lens flare typically appears on the side opposite the light source, along a straight line passing through the center of the image, and moves together with the light source. With an orb there is no such light source in the picture; the „source” is the flash itself.

Experiments and known examples

The Arizona experiment. Two researchers at the University of Arizona, Gary Schwartz and Katherine Creath, took roughly a thousand photos with five different digital cameras in a dimly lit room, under conditions that believers in „spirit orbs” say favor the phenomenon. Orbs appeared in more than a fifth of the images, and they found an ordinary optical explanation for almost all of them: the light of the flash reflected off shiny surfaces in the room or off dust floating near the lens.
Flour and talcum powder. Several researchers and skeptic groups have tried scattering flour, talcum powder or another fine powder in front of a compact camera and then taking photos with the flash. The result is always the same: masses of the orbs familiar from „ghost photos” appear in the pictures.
Night-vision cameras. Security camera manufacturers explain in dedicated guides that the „bubbles” and floating spheres visible in nighttime footage are dust or water droplets drifting near the lens, illuminated by the camera's own infrared light. If the spheres move, it is usually dust drifting in the air, which cannot be eliminated completely.

The orb as a UAP category

The word „orb” also appears frequently in official UAP reports, but there it means something else. According to the 2023 annual report of AARO, the Pentagon office dealing with UAP matters, roughly a quarter of the reports containing a description of shape concerned a spherical, round object, and in the 2025 report this share was already around 40 percent. These were recorded by pilots, military sensors or eyewitnesses, mostly at great distances, so flash backscatter does not explain them. Of the cases identified by AARO, many were explained as balloons, drones and satellites. So it is important to keep them separate: the orb appearing in a flash photo is almost always dust or moisture, while the „orb” in military reports is a description of shape, behind which many kinds of objects may stand.

How can you check it, and what should you do?

Immediately take another picture of the same spot. If the orb has disappeared, is somewhere else, or is a different size, it was almost certainly a floating particle.
Turn off the flash. If there is no orb without the flash, the flash caused it. With a night-vision camera, temporarily turn off the infrared illumination, or light the scene with an external lamp.
Look at the conditions. Was it raining, snowing, humid or foggy? Did you take the photo in a dusty place, or had someone just swept, shaken out a blanket, lit a fire, or were many people moving around?
Examine the orb itself. Is it translucent, patterned inside, a regular circle or polygon? These are signs of an out-of-focus particle near the lens.
Check the file data (EXIF). Most phones and cameras record whether the flash fired when the picture was taken. In most image viewers this can be seen in the „Details” or „Info” menu.
With security and trail cameras, clean the lens, check whether there is a spider web or a spider in front of it, and do not point the camera directly at a strong light or a window pane.
If you also saw something in the sky with the naked eye, it is no longer a flash orb. In that case, note the exact time, the direction and the movement, and investigate the other possible explanations.

Quick telltale signs

Round, translucent spot, often patterned inside
Only in pictures taken with flash or infrared light
No one saw it with the naked eye
In the next picture it is somewhere else, or it disappears
Common in dusty, humid, rainy or snowy surroundings