Night Orbs

Photo date: May 18, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

I took the photo below in New York City in a dark area.  The photo was uploaded directly from the camera, and is not cropped.

Dust a few inches in front of the camera? Not likely, as we see none of these orbs in front of the gate. As it happens, I had a piece of cardboard with me, about the size of a sheet of paper. During the same minute I took the picture above, I took two photos with the sheet of cardboard at arm's length in front of me. Nothing looking like an orb appeared in these two photos, one of which is below.

But three other photos at the same spot during the same minute (not using this sheet of cardboard) did show orbs.

On the same night I took this photo.

There was no fog, mist, rain, or other precipitation on this night.  The air quality as listed on airnow.gov was "good," with a rating of 31 (anything below 50 is considered good).

I will have a lot more to say later about this type of cardboard test. So far I've used it about 70 times, and never seen any orbs in front of the cardboard, even at times and places when I'm photographing hundreds of orbs when I am not holding up a piece of cardboard. Such tests argue strongly against the idea that orbs are specks of dust near the camera.