Beanhead, you need to change your user name to "Airhead."

 

I took this from the middle of the road at the end of my driveway while trying to take a picture of a spooky full moon....






















PS I live on a gravel road and this was taken AFTER a car went by...Those are dust particles not Ghost...LOL The pics taken prior were clean and clear... Orbs are nothing more than the reflection of the flash from the camera off of dust, Bugs, or other air borne objects. I do belive in the supernatural. But not this phenomena...nor mist photos.

 

those are not ghosts, they aren't lens flare, etc.

What you are seeing is a concentrated series of difraction rings from a slightly out of focus point source of light. It is from some tiny particle floating through the air between you and the subject. Could be any number of things, most likely dust, a tiny raindrop, snowflake, etc. Rail dust for example can travel for miles. Did you have clear skies (no clouds at all) when you took the pictures?

Flash photography at night, especially outdoors, is very prone to these artifacts.

If it were dust on the lens or the camera's sensor, it would appear as a shadow and not a bright point source. It is a particle in the air being illuminated by the flash. Try to take a flash picture outside at night during a light rain, and you will see tons of these things on your image.

If you zoomed in on it a great deal, you would see something that looks like this:



Looking at a bright point source of light and defocusing is called a 'star test'. By looking at the pattern made by the rings, you can tell to a fraction of a light wavelength the amount of any defect in your lens (or mirror). Looking at yours, your camera's lens has a tiny smidgin of spherical abberation (same defect as the hubble telescope had).

Sorry, tell Ray, Winston, Peter V. and Egon to stay at home for now...

edit--now that I scroll up, I see PSS's picture. Exact same effect, same cause. Basically said everything I did, I just didn't read all the posts closely enough I guess... His lens suffers from a taste of off-axis coma, barrel distortion, or astigmatism. I can't get a close enough look to distinguish which.

 

Perhaps you broke the lens when you did it...

 

Nope... It's not the windshield... It is an SLR w/ german lens on a tripod in the middle of my DIRT road... LOL It is dust stirred up in the air after I had to move to let a car go by. Teh big one in the middle is the moon... Hinced why that one appears to be emitting it's own light.

 

Here is the one right before the car went by....same settings same lenses, same flash level.... Just 30 seconds prior to the dust field pic.



Edited to add:
I was playing with some new lenses and filters to see how they reacted in low light situations... The moon was just something to focus on in the dark...

Edited again:
The reason you see the road in first pic that I posted and not the second is because I was at the base of a hill and was hopeing to catch the tail lights just as they dropped over the hill with the moon above them. I thought it might come out looking like demon eyes... So I did not use any zoom in that pic. But in a hurry to get the pic. I forgot to turn the flash off...

 

Yeah pss, I don't know what the heck is wrong with me tonight...I'm typing faster than I'm reading for some reason. Maybe I need another beer...

OT--Here's one of mine:

 

WOW that is nice...What size and power scope is that?

Edited:
Look at that crater on the right...The debri from that impact spread 1/2 way around the hunk of cheese...

My pics were with 40mm at 9X optical in the fall, with the moon on the horizon, NO digital zoom.."I disable digital zoom" I hate it!

 

That was taken with an astronomical ccd camera through a little Takahashi 78mm f/8 fluorite scope (630mm FL). The crop factor of the tiny ccd chip really tightened up the field of view; I never took the time to calculate a 35mm focal length equivalent; my guess would be between 1500 and 2000mm.

I miss that stuff...Had to get out of that hobby a few years ago. Started taking 'real' pictures to pay some bills instead of creating them...

Here's another one (yep, consider this thread Hijacked)

 

That's Tycho. Extremely young, as moon craters go...

 

Yep its highjacked...Sorry

I'm still fairly new to photography as far as really getting into the gear... I love taking pics of cars, bikes, boats, Nature, old buildings and other inanimate objects. Started recently doing some action shots but I'm not very good yet.
I know what you mean I really didn't want to get into portraits but I got hired as the photographer to do some for a girl scout troop next month. They wanted packages the parents could buy for for less than $30 I opened my mouth like an idiot and now I am putting together some...

 

I miss Beanie

Oh yeah, awesome pictures inbred!!