The orb that wasn’t (aren’t they all?).

One of the pictures I took of the ruined cottage showed something a little odd. To the right, just above the wall, is what appears to be an orb. What’s odd is that this is in broad daylight, no flash, no filter and no reason to see illuminated dust. Further, the orb appears to be distant, behind a fence post. I noticed nothing at the time.

Here it is enlarged.

Well, it’s definitely behind the fence post. It’s bright and circular. What might it be? Will I have to recant all I’ve said about orbs in the past? Noticing some features within the disc, I enlarged it further. Ignore the 'product placement'. I didn't put that there.

Here we see the mystic symbol ‘60’ within the orb’s disc.

That’s right, it’s a speed limit sign for the railway that runs behind the fence.

These signs are reflective but you don’t notice that in daylight. Because they reflect wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, into the infrared and ultraviolet, the digital camera does notice.

Such infrared/ultraviolet reflections are a common cause of ‘lights that weren’t there when the photo was taken’. They were there. Human eyes just can’t see them. Digital cameras see infrared and ultraviolet and not only at night. They see these wavelengths all the time. Normally, the intensity of light in a daylight shot overrides any image due to infrared, but once in a while a highly IR/UV-reflective surface will crop up, and the camera will show something you didn’t see.

So if a ghost is visible in the infrared, you won’t see them but your camera will. In daylight, that won’t be easy because they’d have to be intensely infrared to even show as an outline on the image. At night, or with an infrared filter by day, the image would show up better.

This wasn’t a ghost, it was a tin disc on a stick, but it illustrates the principle. Don’t give up looking just because the sun’s come up. Your camera is still able to see things you can’t.

At least I can still say with confidence that orbs are bunk.