Purple Orb Dwarfs the Moon

Photo date: April 11, 2017. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below was taken while I was zooming in on the moon. We see a large purple orb that appeared as 24% of the original photo height.

 The focal length was 23 millimeters and the f-stop was f/6.5. It has been claimed that orbs will not show up when you zoom in the camera lens, but a photo like this shows that claim is not true.  The photo here also shows a mysterious orb when the camera was zoomed in (with a focal length of 9 millimeters and an f-stop of 4.5).

It may be claimed that the very large orb shown above was produced by lens flare. But it wasn't. Lens flare is only produced when you point the camera at a very bright light source like the sun or a high-intensity light. Below are four photos I took with the same camera, zooming in on street lights that had a much greater relative brightness than the moon. None of them produced any large lens flare.

There was no fog, mist, rain or precipitation on this night.