Big Purple Orb Floats Mysteriously

Photo date: October 11, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below shows a large purple orb next to a building in New York City. The orb had a height that was 9 percent of the original photo height.  An orb this size is way too big to be a dust particle. Outdoor dust particles have a size of only about 1 micron, which is about 1/15000 (one fifteen thousandth) of the area directly in front of a camera lens.  For a dust particle to appear this large, it would have to be about 1500 microns -- which is larger than the largest possible particle of airborne dust.

There was no fog, mist, rain, or precipitation on this night. The air quality listed on airnow.gov was "good."