A Mysterious Purple Orb Larger Than a Basketball

Photo date: May 12, 2015.  Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below was taken in New York City, at a dark spot away from any streetlights.  The photo was uploaded directly from the camera, and has not been cropped. We see a large purple orb.

The size of the orb (31 percent of the photo width) tells us that this purple orb cannot be an ordinary speck of dust near the camera, since when such specks of dust appear in front of the camera they never look larger than 5 or 10 percent of the original photo width (and are not purple-colored). But there is something else that tells us this cannot be a speck of dust near the camera. It is the fact that the object is blocked by a post and some foliage that were at least a meter from my camera when this photo was taken. The closeup below shows this blockage.

From the fact that the purple orb is behind these objects, I estimate that this orb must have been at least a meter in width. There was no mist, fog, rain, or other precipitation on this night, and the air quality listed on airnow.gov was "good."  For similar photos, see my posts labeled "air orb too distant to be dust" and "air orb too large to be dust."