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What can this be?
Lens: M28 2.8 Camera: K5 ISO: 1600 Shutter Speed: 6s 
Posted By: morpho, 01-16-2012, 07:45 AM

Hello!

This has been somewhat of a mystery to me. I was out one early morning, trying to photograph a meteorswarm. When reviewing the images, i noticed i've got a lot to learn, but at least i managed to capture some meteorites, in fact, the enclosed picture contains 4 meteors at once. But that is not why i am posting it here. There is also a red swirly thingy showing in the picture, and i haven't got the faintest idea of what it can be. My friends have suggested everything from aliens via pubic hair(!) to chromatic aberrations and other stuff i've never heard about, but i don't find any of those particularily plausible, so perhaps someone here got some good suggestions?

Out of around 90 pictures taken, this was the only one where this appeared. The lens was an M28 2.8 @ 2.8, shutter speed 6 sec. I wish i'd dropped my ISO to 400 or 800 and upped the shutter speed, but i wanted to have as little star trails as possible. Shooting conditions were good with minimal light pollution. No smokers in the area, and we had all forgotten our flashlights. The pictures are taken from an elevation of about 300 meters, it was probably around -5 degrees celsius, and just a little wind. I THINK this is taken in a slightly westerly direction, but i can't be sure.

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01-16-2012, 10:22 AM   #2
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I know you said it's only in the one frame, but if the frames before and after the one above are in the same section of sky, please take a more careful look to see if you see any evidence of the object anywhere.

Possibilities include:
  1. False image due to an optical or processing artifact.
  2. Something close to the camera. A small object blowing past during that frame?
  3. Something large and far away. The pattern does not look like a galaxy or other deep sky object. Maybe something momentary like the Aurora Borealis?
  4. Something fast and far away. Aircraft usually wouldn't make such a tight turn within a 6 second exposure, though.
You can post the photo to flickr and submit it to the Astrometry group. Their "Blind Astrometry Solver" will calculate the exact sky location of a photo.
01-16-2012, 10:38 AM   #3
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I've had something similar, mine was s-shaped, black, fuzzier than yours, and down in the lower left of the frame. And mine only appeared in one photo as well.

Best guess is that they are pieces of fiber, small enough to float into a mirror box area and land on the sensor. Easily dislodged the next time the sensor goes thru its sonic cleaning shake.

Nothing to worry about in any case. Mine was on one of the better landscapes i've taken, and i photoshopped it out of the scene.
01-16-2012, 10:47 PM   #4
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We all like a good mystery.

On my monitor there seems to be a diffuse reddish brown haze across a wide area of the frame. Could it be perhaps industrial polution, light cloud or mist reflecting light from the ground. I have seen on time exposures over the sea, what looks to lights in the sky which on close examination turned out to be ship's lights reflecting from mist. Invisible to the naked eye but showing up on film.

That's my theory anyway.

01-17-2012, 01:46 AM   #5
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Thanks for the replies

If there was something floating around in the mirror box area, would it be visible at all exposures? I remember adjusting the exposure or fill-light in Lightroom for this, and most of my other pictures from that night, and it wasn't until then that the red swirl appeared. Which, come to think of it, makes me uncertain it's not appearing on any of the other pictures, because i didn't adjust all of them, but perhaps around 60 out of 90. I will check those out later!

I don't think it can be Aurora borealis. If it is, it's not like any Aurora Borealis i've ever seen, and we have a lot of that where i live in northern Norway. I think it can be something small that floats by, or it can be the lights of either a plane or a satelite or something, which gets distorted in the atmosphere. I don't think it can be industrial pollution; my little corner of the world is very clean, but you never know. Some sort of cloud or lights reflecting and bouncing around in/on something i definately think it can be. Perhaps i should send the RAW-image to NASA?
01-17-2012, 11:04 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by morpho Quote
If there was something floating around in the mirror box area, would it be visible at all exposures?
Something loose could be floating around inside your camera. I once had a thread hanging off the bottom of my mirror and it changed position with every shutter click.

I now do a brief cleaning when I get home if I change lenses out in the field. Remove the lens, point the camera down, give a few a shots with a bulb blower. I do this while the mirror is down; I don't use the sensor cleaning menu option. My hope is that my quick cleaning will remove dust before it has a chance to get stuck to the sensor.
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