Weird Picture of a Star, Maybe

Last night a friend of mine was taking pictures of the moon with a digital camera she just got.
There was one star that she has been watching for awhile that she wanted a picture of.
Well she took the pic and when she DLed it onto her computer, it wasn't what we expected at all.

Now, I am not saying it's anything.
What got me was when I looked at it, it looked first like a Sphinx, then a little like the Eye Of Horus to me.
Actually what I thought of was those old laser holograms that used to do at concerts.
But it was a picture of a star, I watched her take it.
I thought, could it be her hand shook when she snapped the pic?
But to shake like that would seem to be more of a seizure.

She has the original on her camera, and computer, and if anyone thinks it might be worth DLing to look at, I can try to do that.
But I warn you now that I have never done anything like this before so you might have to talk me through it.

Again it might just be a shaky hand holding the camera, but none of her other pics she took did that.
And like I said when I first saw it I thought Sphinx, then Eye of Horus.
Heck it might be the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Anyway, take a look at the link and if you think it's worth looking at let me know.
If not, what made the weird image so she can avoid it happening again.

Here's the link to the pic:
img30.imageshack.us...

Originally posted by Sabreblade
Again it might just be a shaky hand holding the camera,

You got it right there. Digital zoom has many drawbacks and this is one of them.

That is what happens when you point your camera at a lit object and you do not have a steady hand.

See my post here with examples of the same thing.

Uh, looks like Tinkerbell to me. Or maybe one of them angels you put on top of your xmas tree?

I was going with the shaky hand myself, gonna try it tonight with the same star and a tripod this time.
Thanks for the replies!

Originally posted by Zeta Reticulan

This is what Dorothy Izatt calls "Aliens":

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dc5e3b3467f7.jpg[/atsimg]

"Don't you see the alien heads coming out"? No, I don't, I see camera shake

Originally posted by greeneyedleo
That is what happens when you point your camera at a lit object and you do not have a steady hand.

See my post here with examples of the same thing.

Great examples.

That "capturing the light" video she sells is totally exposed for the farce it is every time someone takes a picture like this. She even thinks her camera shake spells her name:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a23a7e0cfe66.jpg[/atsimg]
Looks like some camera shake and light writing going on there just like your examples.

But hey, if we can see images in clouds, why can't we see images in lights in shaky pictures? That's the way our brain works, we seek out patterns we can recognize.

The tripod should help, but I've seen motion on extreme telephoto from something as simple as the wind blowing, so even the tripod might not eliminate all shaking completely unless it's calm.

Thanks again for the replies.
We're gonna try this again in about an hour, so if by some miracle we get "exactly" the same picture as last night, I'll post.
But if it is indeed just a shaky camera, the pic won't look anything like the one last night and I think we can chalk this up to "lesson learned".

reply to post by Arbitrageur


i was going to bring up dorothy izatt when i saw the picture by the OP. Although i can see where you are coming from Arbitrageur, i do think there are some intriguing things that happen in Dorothys documentary, more than just a shaky hand.

Well we went out and took pictures and although there were weird patterns again, there was no Sphinx or Eye of Horus.
So I have to say it was a shaky cam.
The thing I wonder though is if you look at the original picture at Imageshack, although there is the weird design in the center, to the left is a dim star that is in focus, and doesn't have the wavy lines.
It's very faint, but you can make it out.
I can't figure out why that star isn't all wavy and weird like the center one.
Oh well...maybe I should take some photography classes and I'll figure that one out.

Originally posted by ziggyproductions05
i was going to bring up dorothy izatt when i saw the picture by the OP. Although i can see where you are coming from Arbitrageur, i do think there are some intriguing things that happen in Dorothys documentary, more than just a shaky hand.

I agree there's more going on than a shaky cam. The last image I posted also has light writing in it, see the shapes like mountain peaks? That looks like light writing, like the examples in greeneyedleo's links. So it's got both. Some people speculated her granddaughter may have been running in front if the camera with a light source, like I used to do with a kid. I used to love to wave sparklers around and watch the light trails they'd leave. But it looks most like a little flashlight or something in the Izatt photos.

Originally posted by Sabreblade
So I have to say it was a shaky cam.
The thing I wonder though is if you look at the original picture at Imageshack, although there is the weird design in the center, to the left is a dim star that is in focus, and doesn't have the wavy lines.
It's very faint, but you can make it out.
I can't figure out why that star isn't all wavy and weird like the center one.
Oh well...maybe I should take some photography classes and I'll figure that one out.

I'm glad you pinpointed the camera shake as the cause.

I see what you're talking about with the dot on the left.

That's not unlike the Izatt photos where the some of the lights are blinking on and off.

I'm not sure what it is but I can give you a guess. It could be a flashing strobe light from some kind of distant aircraft. The strobe is very quick, so it would only leave a single image like that, even if you are shaking the camera.

reply to post by Sabreblade


the object to the side could be dust ... maybe .. or reflection



[edit on 25-6-2010 by Zeta Reticulan]

Originally posted by Zeta Reticulan
reply to post by Sabreblade

 

the object to the side could be dust ... maybe .. or reflection

Good point, if it's dust on the lens then it's position won't change when you shake the camera, I'm just not sure if there's enough illumination to illuminate the dust, unless there's a light source from the side we can't see, like a full moon outside the field of view perhaps?

But probably not a reflection, if it was, that would be affected by camera shake too right?

reply to post by Sabreblade


Verrry Interesting! However, what really makes it more interesting is that your friend's image resembles an Iraq-Mesopotaniam winged human:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c1b70144617d.jpg[/atsimg]

After I posted this image I decided to take a closer look at your friend's image so I copied it put in one of my photo folders so that I could use the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer with its zoom and I blew the image UP! I haven't read all of the replies as they will be mostly guesses and not good guesses at that.

I would guess that your friend shook the camera ever so minutely as similar images have been seen a million times worldwide. Additionally, it resembles the kind of images that Dorothy Izatt creates but her images are allegedly not due to camera shake.

There is one famous UFO case where a plane flew a particular route and a photographer on board was taking movies out the cockpit's windshield and in one frame captured an image that looks like this: & A lot was made of the image and it was simply due to camera shake.


[edit on 25-6-2010 by The Shrike]

reply to post by The Shrike


I was thinking it looked like an ancient eel , eye and martini glass.

but its probably not

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I remember hearing that case of Dorothy. As a worker on film industry i was very amazed.

You do know the moving lights where found between frames and in only one frame.

Going at 24, or even 15 frames per seconds that means it you can't have long expousores, but one single 1/15 expousure

still, you could say you can cut and paste those single frames from another film to this film of normal lights, but as I remember the doc said they tested complete material.

I'm do believe that the OP picture being from a digital auto cam is product of shake and relativily long expousure

But was the Dorothy case regarded as a hoax? I'm not fighting. I just want to know, Im curious about it.

Originally posted by Jskun
snip
But was the Dorothy case regarded as a hoax? I'm not fighting. I just want to know, Im curious about it.

Do a search here and you will find at least 6 pages about Dorothy Izatt.

reply to post by Jskun

No it wasn't a cut and paste, the film was continuous.

A guy who buys broken cameras, repairs them, and then sells them on e-bay is familiar with this kind of defect as it's one he's repaired before. You can read about it in the 4 posts I made on this page, the hobbyist repair guy's commentary is in the 2nd post I made:

Capturing the Light, The Story Of Dorothy Izatt (2007)

reply to post by The Shrike


Well what got me was that I saw an image very quickly, it wasn't just squiggly lines to me.

I saw a Sphinx right off the bat, then the Eye of Horus.
BUT you could also pretty plainly see an apple, and looking back, I could see a dolphin and a crocodile if I looked long enough.

So I guess that's pareidolia at work.


[edit on 26-6-2010 by Sabreblade]