Big Orb Above the Tower

Photo date: April 20, 2016. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below shows a large purple orb above a building in midtown Manhattan. The original photo has been reduced in width, but not in height.  The orb was ten percent of the original photo height. Given a width in front of the camera of about 15 millimeters (15,000 microns), a speck of dust would have to have a size of about 1500 microns to appear this large. But the dust particles floating about in outdoor air are only about 1 micron in size, and always reduce visibility when they are larger than 100 microns.  Their was no reduced visibility when the photo was taken.

There was no rain, fog, mist or precipitation on this night. The air quality listed on airnow.gov was "good," with a rating of 40..