A Giant Purple Orb Repeatedly Photographed

Photo date: April 2, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

All of the photos in this post are the original photos uploaded directly from the camera, without any cropping.

Below is a photo I took of a church in New York City, a church near where I live. The photo was taken with a Nikon Coolpix L28 camera which was modified to be a full-spectrum camera, which captures more infrared light, and causes images to appear more purple-colored.

The photo shows a gigantic purple orb, the largest orb I have ever photographed. It is 82% of the photo height. 

This image (taken at 8:59 PM) was so remarkable that I wondered whether it might be some malfunction of the camera.  So a minute later (at 9:00 PM) I took the photo below, pointing at the ground.

This photo showed nothing like the orb seen in the first photo. So the first photo was evidently not caused by any type of camera malfunction or lens smudge.

I then pointed again at the church, from a different angle, and took the photo above, also taken at 9:00 PM. I got the photo shown below.

Remarkably, my photo showed the same giant purple orb. At 9:01 PM I turned around about 180 degrees, and took a photo of the street, taking the photo shown below.

Thinking again that perhaps this was just some camera malfunction, I then photographed the ground again, producing this photo at 9:01 PM. No sign of the orb.

Pointing at the church's steeple, I got this photo at 9:01 PM. Again, we see a giant purple orb.

Starting to walk back home, I took this image at 9:02 PM.  Now there was no sign of the orb.

I then took this picture at 9:02 PM.  I was now on a different block. Again, the giant orb appeared in my photo.

Just to check again that no camera malfunction was involved, I then took this picture at 9:03 PM. There was no sign of the orb.

I then took this photo at 9:04 PM. Now the orb was back again.

Finally I took one more photo at 9:05 PM which showed no sign of the orb.

The photos shown here were all uploaded directly from my camera, and were not saved in any photo editor.

For me this photo series is unprecedented. I have never photographed an orb so large, nor have I ever had a situation in which an orb was photographed so frequently in such a short span of time.  The photos I took pointing to the ground show that no camera malfunction or lens smudge can explain this remarkable series of photos.

It was as if I had encountered some spirit that was determined to appear in the rest of the photos I took that night, except for the photos I took pointing to the ground. Of course, dust is not a possible explanation here. A dust particle would have to be as large as a golf ball to have produced an orb this large, and the largest actual dust particles in the air are only about as big as the period at the end of this sentence. There is also no chance of rain being the cause, as there was no precipitation on this night.

The phenomenon observed here looks like the same thing recorded in quite a few photos on this page, where we see lots of giant red orbs. The object I photographed may have been a red orb that appeared as purple because I was using a full-spectrum camera that tends to give things a purplish tint.

There was no precipitation, fog, or mist on this night.  As almost all of the photos showing the huge purple orb were not taken facing a bright light, we cannot explain these observations as being the result of lens flare (which only occurs when pointing the camera at a bright light).


Postscript: The next night I took about 20 night pictures of the sky and the building tops, using the same camera, but I didn't see any anomaly like the one reported in this post. I may note that in 5 out of 6 of these photos, the camera was not facing any bright light. So lens flare is not a plausible explanation for the giant orbs observed here.