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Bright Objects in Photos Taken of the Sun

-- | May 10, 2016

Question: Last summer after taking a photo of a “sun dog” and seeing what I believed to be a planet in the photo I became fixated on finding out what it was. That was 2015. Now its spring 2016 (May 09th) and about a week ago I decided to take pictures of the sun at two separate times during the day, once around 11am, then at 7pm. (dusk and dawn). Each time I look at the photo’s I see nothing, but if I zoom in I see what appears to be 4 planets. there is no mistaking it as I have it n no less than 10 photos. What is it? — Lance

Answer: I suspect what you are seeing is a “lens flare” caused by internal reflections in the optics of your camera which are magnified by the intensity of the light from the Sun. See the past blog post Bright Object Near the Sun for a likely similar scenario from another reader.

Jeff Mangum

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