What exists only in the photo: lens flare, bokeh and the phone's other tricks

6 min read

Many people who take "UFO photos" saw nothing with the naked eye: the strange spot appeared only afterward, in the picture. In such cases the "culprit" is almost always the camera itself. Light reflected inside the lens, an out-of-focus point of light or the phone's image processing draws shapes that do not exist in reality. We show the most common camera tricks, and also how you can filter them out.

The first question: did you see it with the naked eye?

This is the most important question. If you saw nothing when taking the photo or video, and the "object" showed up only in the recording, then the camera almost certainly created it. If you also saw something with the naked eye, but it looks completely different in the recording (for example, a point of light became a disk or a triangle), then the sight was real, but the camera distorted its shape.

1. Lens flare (ghost image)

What does it look like? One or more faint spots, often greenish, bluish or purplish, circular or polygonal in shape. It typically appears when a strong light (the Sun, the Moon, a streetlight or a floodlight) is in the frame or just outside it.

Why does it happen? A lens is made up of several lens elements. Part of the strong light does not pass straight through, but bounces back and forth between the surfaces of the elements, and also appears at another point of the image. This is especially common with the small lenses of phones, particularly if the lens is dirty or scratched.

How to recognize it?

The ghost image is opposite the light source: on the straight line defined by the light source and the center of the image, on the other side of the center.
It moves with the camera, but in reverse. If you move the phone, the light source shifts in one direction of the image, and the ghost image in the other.
It disappears when the light source leaves the frame, or when you shade the lens with your hand.
It is often transparent, and the objects behind it show through.

2. Bokeh: the out-of-focus point of light

What does it look like? A point-like light (a star, a planet, an airplane's light) appears in the image as a disk, ring, polygon or triangle, sometimes as a "floating bubble" or a "structure."

Why does it happen? If the camera does not focus exactly on the light, the point becomes a spot whose shape is given by the shape of the opening inside the lens, the aperture. In the dark, the phone's autofocus finds nothing to lock onto, so it often "breathes": the point of light alternately shrinks and expands, as if it were pulsing or approaching.

How to recognize it?

Every point of light in the image has the same shape. If the stars, the lamps and the "UFO" are all the same disk or triangle, then the shape comes from the lens.
The shape grows or shrinks as the focus changes, but it does not rotate and does not change direction.
Only a point was visible to the naked eye.

Left: lens flare appears opposite the light source, on the straight line passing through the center of the image. Right: the same point of light with different focusing. Sky Glitch chart

3. Digital zoom and "enhancement"

Phone zoom is mostly not optical but digital: the device enlarges a small part of the image, and calculates, smooths and sharpens the missing details. Newer phones also "enhance" the image with artificial intelligence. These programs do not bring out real details, they invent them, so a blurry point can become a sharp-edged disk, a dome or a "row of windows." The same thing happens when a circulating image is "enhanced" after the fact.

4. Rolling shutter and shake

Phone cameras read out the image not all at once, but line by line. If the object or the phone moves quickly, the image becomes distorted: a helicopter's rotor turns into curved blades, a quickly passing light into a slanted or wavy streak. When filming handheld at high zoom, hand shake makes even a stationary point of light appear to zigzag and "maneuver."

5. Reflection on the window glass

If you take a photo through a window, the lamps in the room, the TV or the phone's screen can be reflected on the glass and look like an object "floating" in the sky outside.

6. Dust, rain, insects with the flash

When photographing at night with a flash, dust particles, raindrops or insects floating in front of the lens turn into bright, translucent "spheres." Ghost hunters call these "orbs." On infrared and night-vision cameras, insects and birds flying nearby appear as fast, bright points that "change direction."

Real cases

The space station "mothership," 2012. On the live camera feed of the International Space Station, an elongated white object with tiny dots next to it was visible, which a YouTube user called a "UFO mothership." The explanation: the camera was a few centimeters from the window and recorded a reflection that formed on the glass.
Pittsburgh, 2022. Footage from an airport security camera was circulated as military UFO footage: a slowly rising light became diamond-shaped when zoomed in. Amateur analysts showed from the flight data that it was the landing light of an airliner preparing to land, and the diamond shape was caused by the camera being out of focus.
The green "pyramids," 2021. A leaked U.S. Navy night-vision recording showed triangle-shaped, blinking lights. According to analysts, the triangular shape is bokeh resulting from the device's three-blade aperture: out-of-focus stars and lamps recorded with the night-vision device also look like triangles. The Pentagon did not release an official explanation of this.
The "three objects in formation" image. A circulating infrared image shows a sharp "flying saucer," whereas according to the official description, the recording contained only tiny dots. Our article on the case.

How can you check?

Think through whether you saw it with the naked eye. If not, the camera is the first suspect.
Find the light source. Is there a strong light in the image or right next to it? Is the spot opposite the light source, on the straight line passing through the center of the image? Then it is lens flare.
Look at the other images in the series. If the "object" is in only a single image and is not in the images taken a few seconds earlier or later, it is almost certainly not real.
Compare it with the other lights. If the other points of light in the image have the same shape, the shape comes from the lens.
Repeat it. When photographing from the same spot in the same direction, the same "UFO" often appears again.
Clean the lens. A fingerprint or a scratch can cause a surprisingly strong reflection.
Turn off "enhancement." If you can, also take a recording without zoom and night mode.

Quick telltale signs

It was not visible to the naked eye
There is a strong light source in the image or right next to it
The spot is opposite the light source, transparent
Every point of light has the same shape
It appears in only one or two frames

Do you have a photo showing something strange? Start with the decision tree, and if you can't find the answer, send us the original file!