P.S. Paranormal

Photo date: July 15, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below was uploaded directly from the camera, and has not been cropped. We see a New York City public school. On the left is an orb that is 10 percent of the original photo height (rounding up).  It is certainly not the moon, which wasn't even visible as a thin crescent on this day.

It is interesting to do a blockage fraction calculation to calculate the maximum size in a photo that a suspended dust particle could have.  Dust particles suspended in the air are never larger than 1000 microns (a millimeter), and the area right in front of a camera lens is about 15,000 microns (15 millimeters).  This means even if you had the largest suspended dust particle possible floating in front of a camera (which would only appear in a choking dust storm), you still could not get a dust orb in a photo larger than 7% of the photo height. But this orb is 10 percent of the photo height.

The air quality on this day was listed as "good" on airnow.gov, and in regular air like that the actual dust particles in the air are only about 1 micron, more than 1000 times too small to produce an orb like this. There was no fog, mist, rain, or precipitation on this night.  The pollen count was low to medium, with a level of 4.4.

For similar photos showing orbs as large (or even much larger), see my posts labeled "air orb too large to be dust" and "giant purple air orb."