Pro News Camera-Man Captures "orb" in Sky in Mendham, New Jersey. [Out of Focus Point of Light]

"Orbs" on my Christmas tree, photographed using an iPhone (focus locked on a nearby object, then photographed the tree from across the room).

1734352607828.jpeg



Incidentally the "blue" lights there are white LEDs to the naked eye - the tree has one string of white LEDs and one of warm-white/golden LEDs.

I even caught a string of "worms" as I accidentally moved the camera.

1734352755224.jpeg


The individual circles are presumably caused by the 50Hz flickering of the LED bulbs.
 
Eburacum said:
I've seen quite a few examples of 'rippling orbs/out of focus Airy Discs' over the years.

This particular image has an additional feature that I'm a little puzzled about; there is a small, in-focus dot near the centre of the disk which is sometimes visible, and resembles a clear image of the real object.
View attachment 74706

Presumably this is an artefact of the optics involved; it is almost as if the focused image can also be seen periodically.
Click to expand...
Yes, I noticed those too. I wonder if this might be due to "speckling."

https://handprint.com/ASTRO/seeing1.html#optics
Speckling is produced by high energy, high frequency turbulence (small angular size and very rapid fluctuation) where F < H and v is so rapid that motion blurs. It is usually located at high altitudes and becomes dominant when D >> L so that the aperture can sample the images from many turbulence cells simultaneously. This breaks the star image into multiple, simultaneous Airy disks superimposed on each other at random small distances from a fixed central location within the image field. The same wave interference that produces the dark rings in the undistorted star diffraction artifact creates dark boundaries between the superimposed Airy disks of the simultaneous star images, creating numerous visibly distinct beads of light, called speckles. Because these images of the star are produced simultaneously, the "dancing" locations of the star are combined as a single image — resulting in a bloated, boiling mass of speckles that remains fixed at a single location. At this scale the angular width of turbulence cells is so small that even closely spaced binary stars of equal magnitude will show different speckle patterns moment to moment, and matched magnitude double stars will merge into an unresolved oblong mass.
Click to expand...
 
As I am approaching 50 and my ability to focus close-up has decreased alarmingly over the last couple of years, I can recreate these orbs very easily with the naked eye.

Sticking my face a few inches from the Christmas tree lights or any other small point sources of light, I see exactly this type of "speckly" pattern in the out-of-focus circles, and it "swims" around. Just like the one in the clip in the OP.

1734361261301.png


I'm sure it's something that anybody can test for themselves and see easily. Defocus your eyes and look at a (not too bright) point source of light close up and you will see exactly the phenomenon shown in this news clip.

I even noticed it while having breakfast this morning, the specular highlights caused by the ceiling spotlights shining on the butter on my toast made a series of these speckly textured "orbs" as I moved the toast too close to my face to focus on properly. :oops:
 
substantials said:
I was reading through this thread


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1hdwtd1/are_we_in_disclosure_abc_news_aired_30_seconds_of/


View attachment 74579


It appears to be a professional news cameraman who has captured some sort of "orb" in the sky, in Mendham, New Jersey.
The discussion surrounding this seems to be about how this couldn't possibly be a 'bokeh' or out of focus effect. (due to the camera mans professional credentials)
Other users have chimed in about how they've confirmed this through various software techniques.
I tried tracking down the original news clip with no success yet.
I of course immediately think "what would metabunk say" these days.

EDIT: Found link to newscast, video is 3 minutes in.

https://abc7ny.com/15652850/

I have clipped the segment in its highest resolution, ill add it below.
(she added some additional details at the end before she was cut off by anchor)

View attachment 74594
Click to expand...

Remarkably similar to this video clip of a Nikon P1000 zooming in on a star.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gGyUAynAow
 
jdog said:
There's also a whole genre of optics for generating interesting out-of-focus effects, as with the Lensbaby system of creative aperatures (photo from the Lensbaby blog, credited as "Heart Creative Aperture photo by William Lumsden"):
W_Lumsden.jpg
Click to expand...
That's bokeh, and it generates a lot of hits when you search for it on Metabunk.
 
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
 
Tibo said:
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...
So why does it look exactly like out-of-focus images of Venus that we've been seeing for years?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1-Dz2Xt4QE
 
Trailblazer said:
Some of the more "out-there" accounts on social media have been posting out-of-focus videos and photos like that for years as some kind of "evidence" that the accepted wisdom about the appearance of stars and planets is a lie...

eg

View attachment 74943 View attachment 74944
Click to expand...


I particularly like how you can see the "spider" and secondary mirror in the purple one at upper right.
telescope spider.JPG


Also, the sheer ignorance of history that leads to believing that it is the "space agencies" are the ones that figured out that stars are indeed suns is -- OK, not surprising, but disappointing. That was proposed by Greek philosophers in the 400s BCE, and pretty much settled in the 1800s by the work of Friedrich Bessel and others (building on the work of Galileo, Bruno, Kepler and them folks.

Edited to source that last paragraph:
External Quote:

Many people's work was needed to prove that the Sun is a star. ... around AD1590, Giordano Bruno suggested [that stars were distant Suns], and was burnt at the stake for it. Through the work of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicusduring the 16th and 17th centuries the nature of the solar system and the Sun's place in it became clear, and finally in the 19th century the distances to stars and other things about them could be measured by various people. Only then was it proved that the Sun is a star.
...
Finally, in 1838, Friedrich Bessel for the first time measured the distance to a star without any assumptions about the nature of stars and found it to be enormous. Distances to other stars followed soon,and then people could calculate the true brightnesses of stars,corrected for their distance to us, and discovered them to be about as bright as the Sun. When other things about the Sun were also found to be like those of stars, such as its surface temperature and chemical composition, then the proof was finally here that the Sun is a star.
Source: https://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsunasstar.html
 
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Tibo said:
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...
Hi, welcome to the site! One thing that you will find here is that making a lot of claims without citations and sources is not how we try to do things. You make several claims there and don;t provide sources or back any of them up. (I admit to the irony of that when I just posted about Bessel, Galileo and Kepler et al ... with no source! ^_^ I'll go edit that now...
 
Tibo said:
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...

I find that a strange opinion for someone in that profession. I'm not a professional videographer but I have a fairly keen amateur interest in photography. Blurry "orbs" like this are very familiar to me and I would imagine to anyone who uses cameras a lot.

You also see them when there are dust particles or raindrops/snow in the air and you use a flash: the same out of focus points of light create "orbs".
 
Tibo said:
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...
I think it possible that an experienced cameraman taking a well-planned video in a studio setting might not get the same results as an excited (although experienced) cameraman startled by an unexpected sight and taking it hurriedly with whatever camera (or phone) is at hand, which certainly might be on auto focus.
 
Tibo said:
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...
That's a claim that would be given greater credibility if backed up by some photos demonstrating how out of focus distant point sources can be distinguished from this example. Without that, it's just a "trust me, bro'".

I will grant you that were professional-grade gear to be attempting to auto-focus it would achieve a much better result than what we see, and therefore it's almost certainly manual focus. Which alas forces us to bring out Hanlan's Razor.
 
Ann K said:
I think it possible that an experienced cameraman taking a well-planned video in a studio setting might not get the same results as an excited (although experienced) cameraman startled by an unexpected sight and taking it hurriedly with whatever camera (or phone) is at hand, which certainly might be on auto focus.
Click to expand...
I suspect the cameraman was told to stop fiddling with all those complicated dials when the image he was achieving looked the most interesting.
 
Mendel said:
No, that's fine. I missed that.
That kinda rules out the "camera effect" hypothesis.
Click to expand...
No, that just means they saw a light in the sky and apparently tried to zoom in as far as possible. This is clearly out of focus, if it was a telescope, I would say a collimation or astigmatism issue. We are assuming this is a large professional-grade camera with a professional videographer, but I was interviewed a few months ago on the street by KGO-San Francisco (ABC 7) and the "cameraman" was using an iPhone. These days, they tend to have assistants, not cameramen.
 
Scaramanga said:
If it looks like Venus out of focus and twinkles like Venus out of focus....its probably Venus out of focus.

Is this sort of yawn inducing video really the best that UFOlogy has to offer ? No razor sharp videos of mile wide craft with every rivet showing and friendly aliens waving out of the window ? Just endless 'orbs'.
Click to expand...
They think this is what the ships look like. I have ended up in multiple debates with people that swear these objects are not out of focus....
 
Tibo said:
Hey Guys!
Im videographer, cameraman like 15 years experience in television industry, so I can tell you this is not blurring or out of focus scene here for 99,9% sure.
I dont know what the object is , but I can recognize out of blur or focus problem for 100 miles :D or when the camera autofocus try to find the focus on object, and it is not looking like that.
Plus info, the experienced cameramans works with manual focus for sure not on automatic when to subject is not moving.
Click to expand...

Hey Tibo!

Amateur astrophotographer here with 10 years of experience, and I can tell you that this is 100% what a slightly out of focus star/planet with atmospheric refraction looks like. It is actually quite difficult to achieve perfect focus on a star/planet with both automatic and manual focus, because what looks perfect on your viewfinder/monitor is usually slightly out. This is why Bahtinov masks are recommended to assist with focus.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X27D1wOUaY

I would imagine there are two possible explanations for what happened here - 1) The cameraman quickly eyeballed the monitor, mistakenly thought he was in focus, and the video presented in the news segment is a digital crop and zoom of the original footage where the out of focus issue becomes more apparent, or 2) ABC News is knowingly pulling everyone's leg.
 
substantials said:
I was reading through this thread


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1hdwtd1/are_we_in_disclosure_abc_news_aired_30_seconds_of/


View attachment 74579


It appears to be a professional news cameraman who has captured some sort of "orb" in the sky, in Mendham, New Jersey.
The discussion surrounding this seems to be about how this couldn't possibly be a 'bokeh' or out of focus effect. (due to the camera mans professional credentials)
Other users have chimed in about how they've confirmed this through various software techniques.
I tried tracking down the original news clip with no success yet.
I of course immediately think "what would metabunk say" these days.

EDIT: Found link to newscast, video is 3 minutes in.

https://abc7ny.com/15652850/

I have clipped the segment in its highest resolution, ill add it below.
(she added some additional details at the end before she was cut off by anchor)

View attachment 74594
Click to expand...

Thanks! Given the information that it isn't the moon, but it is a bright light in the sky around Dec 13th at Sunset, my best guess is still Venus, which is shining at -4.4 Mag at sunset... it would also produce this watery effect in both a smartphone camera due to astigmatism, and a higher quality camera due to temp variations in the atmosphere, but since it isn't properly focused, it really, really looks more like astigmatism on a phone camera. I'm still a student though, majoring in physics and astronomy, so don't really have the experience to be 100%
 

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AstroNash said:
it would also produce this watery effect in both a smartphone camera due to astigmatism, and a higher quality camera due to emp variations in the atmosphere.
Click to expand...
@AstroNash Can you say a bit about the meaning of "astigmatism" in this context? I am afraid it might cause some confusion.
 
JMartJr said:
@AstroNash Can you say a bit about the meaning of "astigmatism" in this context? I am afraid it might cause some confusion.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I am referring to an optical aberration where the lens fails to focus light evenly across the image sensor, making point of light appear blurry rather than crisp. I guess a good example of this is when you are driving a car at night, and all the lights look blurry with streaks through them. AS you move the camera when zoomed in, you'll keep changing that focus, making it look wavy, or like it is underwater. I have heard that some phones can also produce this effect when using digital zoom, especially when trying to compensate for low light, but not that familiar with camera tech.
Here is a good definition:
In a camera, "astigmatism" refers to a lens defect where light rays entering the lens at different angles are not focused at the same point, resulting in blurry or distorted images; essentially, the lens cannot accurately project a point of light as a single point on the sensor.
 
AstroNash said:
Yeah, I am referring to an optical aberration where the lens fails to focus light evenly across the image sensor, making point of light appear blurry rather than crisp. I guess a good example of this is when you are driving a car at night, and all the lights look blurry with streaks through them. AS you move the camera when zoomed in, you'll keep changing that focus, making it look wavy, or like it is underwater. I have heard that some phones can also produce this effect when using digital zoom, especially when trying to compensate for low light, but not that familiar with camera tech.
Here is a good definition:
In a camera, "astigmatism" refers to a lens defect where light rays entering the lens at different angles are not focused at the same point, resulting in blurry or distorted images; essentially, the lens cannot accurately project a point of light as a single point on the sensor.
Click to expand...
"Astigmatism" as an optical aberration has a very specific definition with regard to the way it presents in images. This will be most noticeable at or very near focus, as there is no crisp focus in both the tangential and sagittal directions at once. If you see "blurry lights with streaks through them" I doubt that it is due to astigmatism in your optical system.

I agree with those who say this looks almost certainly like an out-of-focus image of a point source seen through an extended line of sight through the atmosphere. The shape of the image will reflect the pupil of the system and the variations are due to atmospheric refraction causing uneven pupil illumination. As these small pockets of air with varying index of refraction move across the line of sight, there will be a scintillation effect, as in the twinkling of stars.
 
AmberRobot said:
"Astigmatism" as an optical aberration has a very specific definition with regard to the way it presents in images. This will be most noticeable at or very near focus, as there is no crisp focus in both the tangential and sagittal directions at once. If you see "blurry lights with streaks through them" I doubt that it is due to astigmatism in your optical system.
Click to expand...

But astigmatism occurs for out of axis objects mostly. On axis the focus is good, so if the said "orb" was seen on axis (middle of image), it cannot be astigmatism but just out of focus.
 
Ravi said:
But astigmatism occurs for out of axis objects mostly. On axis the focus is good, so if the said "orb" was seen on axis (middle of image), it cannot be astigmatism but just out of focus.
Click to expand...
I agree that what's seen in this video is from poor focus not astigmatism.
 
AmberRobot said:
I agree that what's seen in this video is from poor focus not astigmatism.
Click to expand...
Indeed, perhaps the guy's camera software is trying to sharpen the blobby image, resulting in this disk..

Every camera fails at correct focus on stars or planets even. That is because the algorithm for autofocus is not using point sources to guide, but the spatial contrast of the image.
 
Ravi said:
Indeed, perhaps the guy's camera software is trying to sharpen the blobby image, resulting in this disk..

Every camera fails at correct focus on stars or planets even. That is because the algorithm for autofocus is not using point sources to guide, but the spatial contrast of the image.
Click to expand...
And it doesn't take much to be out of focus on a point source, especially if the aperture is opened up a bit, so it's not like it automatically means it was a poor camera operator.
 
AstroNash said:
They think this is what the ships look like. I have ended up in multiple debates with people that swear these objects are not out of focus....
Click to expand...

Me too. It's very similar to arguing with chemtrail people....where no amount of solid evidence will persuade them its just standard aircraft contrails. Such is the nature of belief.
 
Do we know if this was aired live, or recorded and brought back to the editor to cut into a story? If not live, in fairness to the camera operator they may have shot plenty of great in-focus footage of the point light source that is Venus in the sky, accurate but sort of visually boring, and a few seconds of this out of focus cool looking shimmery stuff, and then had nothing to do with the editor deciding to use the cool looking glistening orb for airing on the news.
 
Do we know what kind of camera this was recorded by? Someone already mentioned in this thread that, these days, reporters in the field can be accompanied by an "assistant" with a cell phone rather than by a pro cameraman.

It makes sense to me as a cost cutting measure. Who cares about quality in a casual report? It's so easy to get acceptable quality with a cell phone or consumer grade camera held by a casual user these days; why should they spend the money?

This is just the kind of image you'd get with a consumer grade camera set to automatic focus.

Does anyone know for sure what common practice is these days?
 
Scaramanga said:
If it looks like Venus out of focus and twinkles like Venus out of focus....its probably Venus out of focus.

Is this sort of yawn inducing video really the best that UFOlogy has to offer ? No razor sharp videos of mile wide craft with every rivet showing and friendly aliens waving out of the window ? Just endless 'orbs'.
Click to expand...
I agree, it looks just like a planet before I focus my telescope.
 
JMartJr said:
WIth the addendum that Sirius is in the night sky these days -- it could also be a brights star, yeah?
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess that might be possible, but I think it's far more likely to be Venus. The video seems to have been captured during twilight hours, which would be sometime between 16:31 and 18:09 Mendham local time (Source: timeanddate.com).

Looking at Stellarium, Venus would have been visible low in the SSW-SW sky during this time and until it dropped below the horizon at about 19:30. Sirius, on the other hand, didn't rise until about 20:10 when it would have been well and truly dark outside.
 
AstroNash said:
Thanks! Given the information that it isn't the moon, but it is a bright light in the sky around Dec 13th at Sunset, my best guess is still Venus, which is shining at -4.4 Mag at sunset... it would also produce this watery effect in both a smartphone camera due to astigmatism, and a higher quality camera due to temp variations in the atmosphere, but since it isn't properly focused, it really, really looks more like astigmatism on a phone camera. I'm still a student though, majoring in physics and astronomy, so don't really have the experience to be 100%
Click to expand...
Venus makes the most sense. The colour of the background appears to be civil twilight and that is when Venus appears. Bad atmospheric seeing is common around Venus because it is only visible early in the night (before the atmosphere starts to settle down) and it is closer to the horizon (where the poor atmospheric seeing is worse due to traversing through more of the atmosphere).

I wonder what type of lens was used. You'd need a pretty good telephoto lens to pick up something like that.
 
Ravi said:
Indeed @elvenwear, like these great example images from Kuli Zoltán, posted recently (28/12) on the realtime image gallery from Spaceweather.
View attachment 75322 View attachment 75323

Source: https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=218704

External Quote:
Venus experienced a green and blue flash," says photographer Kuli Zoltán of Piszkesteto, Hungary, who witnessed the colorful display through his 80 mm refracting telescope.
Click to expand...
Very interesting. I'd heard about atmospheric dispersion (where the atmosphere creates chromatic aberration near the horizon), but I'd never seen it. Dark sites I've been on have never had a great horizon. Interesting fact: the Schupmann telescope design is able to tune out this atmospheric dispersion.

What is interesting about the photos you have posted is the colour has gaps, indicating an uneven dispersion that splits the light.
 
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