So I was sorting through some recent photos and found a handful of photo's I'd taken at one location with a weird object in the sky. Attached below is one such image ( it was re-saved from the original version -- which is still kicking around -- to reduce size for upload). The EXIF data is intact.
Click to view attachment


Ok, so the line above is a fairly typical line you see on the boards when getting into photos (and as I'm sure it is in those cases, completely a true statement). When I first looked at the images I couldn't figure out what I was looking at, and couldn't remember anything it could be. The photo was taken off the side of a wall with a river on the other side so there was no way it was a street light, and it's not the right shape to be the moon. It took me 10 minutes of head scratching and looking at some of the later images before I finally remembered what it was.

What I've come to the conclusion is, it's funny how quickly we ignore or block out totally innocuous objects in a scene... And how much those objects can stick out when you go look at them again in photos.

So I'd thought I'd see if other people who like trying sort out the contents of images could identify it. If there's actually any interest in this I'll post what it is in a day or so.

At first i thought it looked like a blimp, but realised that a blimp wouldn,t be all alight like that! So i looked again, and thought it,s a hot air balloon, you just can,t see the balloon part in the dark but you can see the light from the flame that lifts it! It,s just the weird angle that the pic. was taken that makes it look cigar shaped! Am i even close?

it is odd, and no one came out with it in the papers or explanations? a lot of shape like that have been spotted

You KNOW what that is in the image? I'd surely like to know what it is.... It's definitely over the water and closer to the camera than everything else is, judging by the perspective of the reflection in the water to the object itself, plus it's pretty blurry and wouldn't be so much if the object was further away. So, maybe some nutter threw a frisbee as you were taking the pic Seriously, the object doesn't seem very large at all.

I don't know...it doesn't seem like a solid object to me. It looks blurred like it was moving and maybe a bit transparent. My first thought was a bug flying by, but you say it showed up in a couple images so I doubt it would keep flying back and forth just to get it's picture taken. Smoke from a fire or fireworks maybe? o.O

I have no clue what it is, but I never was good at that kind of stuff anyway. I'd still love to know what it actually was though.

My guess is its a bird lit by light and blurry because of long exposure (1/8 1/4 or so)

Partially obscured full moon, with it's reflection on the water.

Is it a spaceship?
I love the photo ones

Actually, it was a blimp .. about 10-15 feet long, that would fly around that section of river with advertising on the side. I'm guessing it was internally lit so that you could still read the sign on it at night - though never really thought about it while I was there. It's blurred because, being a night photo the exposure time was actually about 1sec.

Nothing too mysterious -- but it's funny how quickly you forget things that you were looking right at but didn't feel were important.

It's reflection has an upside down triangle on it.

That's a beautiful pic The one thing i find interesting about it is the orb is reflected in the water.

A blimp!!! Haahaa veddy good, veddy good!! I would never have imagined it to be a blimp - I thought it was something smaller.

The moon shining through the clouds?

A reflection of the flash off of the water?

Though I've said what it is, I thought I would add -- there is no flash in this. I'd say 9/10 night photos it's not worth using flash. Unless everything you want captured is within like 10feet of you it just messes the image up.

Rassy has a point there...it does look like that.

A blimp hahahahaa

hmm odd indeed, it does have a reflection in the water, hard to detemine what it could have been. Interesting non the less

Wait, you're not serious that it was a 15 foot blimp are you? You just said you stated what it was already... lol...

Thank you for that advice! That is a gorgeous picture, blimp and all!

I'm totally serious.. it's a 15ish foot remote control blimp that just flies along between two bridges and a path on one side with an advertisement on it.

Wow imagine that, my first guess was right and i poo pooed it! I guess it,s all lit up to advertise something then? because it,s the whole thing lit up like that which threw me off!

Haha, nice. Looks nothing like a blimp though. Well, not to me anyway.

Wow swtp, your good Did you get your prize yet... (((to you)))....goalie

Great Picture! I did a long study on your picture. Here is what I have concluded by observing it for a while.

First, the object would appear to be almost directly over the bridge as far as the reflection, would show us, by extrapolation.
The object then should appear to be around twenty feet in diameter.

If you look at the reflections of the buildings, there is some distortion in the water, but not by any large degree.

If we take the distortions of the buildings reflection in the water and apply the same amount of distortion to the relection
of the object in the water, we can find that the object's reflection is not nearly as symmetrical from the lake reflection as it
is from the camera's perspective in the shot. In other words, the reflection gives you a more severe angle and more of
a "bottom" view of the object, since the reflection view is more from under the object.

Taking into account, that the reflection shows a "under" view, you can see by applying the known water distortion to it,
that it actually is not nearly as neat of a disc shape as is the view angle of the camera..

I know from experience that the shutter speed was set to a very slow setting to capture this photo, without a flash.
The sad part is that anything, such as a bird would create such a blur with the shutter speed set at a slower setting.
The slow speed then would stretch and blur any object at all. There is not enough data to say what this is.
It sure is a great picture though. You can say it is a UFO though, as we can't identify conclusively, what this apparent
flying object is. Therefore, it is an "unidentified flying object". Most likely it will have some mundane explanation, but
as of now, I can't say for sure what it is.

looks like someone just used a lil photo shop. the object is the exact same size as one of the brushes and you can see the reflection is made with a mouse. I can't remember what tool it is but the opposite of the burn tool. I could take that picture and move that object anywhere. Besides look at the reflection, there is no way judging by the location of the object, looks to be beyond the bridge, that it would send a reflection down that far to the water, especially from the height and distance. Water isn't a mirror you hardy get a reflection from the actual lights and that thing reflects that crazy. Def. Hoax and this si the first time i have ever said that but i can see it right away.
I didn't even see the reflection the first time and I htought it was the dodge tool *rememberd the name) but then looking at that reflection just made me know it was use of the dodge tool.


Seriously if anyone has photoshop make a black background use and oval brush and put the intensity to about 75% and click twice and you'll get the same object exactly!

Hmm.. thinking on how to address this post.. First I guess, is the likely hood I would photoshop something to claim it was a small blimp. Unfortunately there is no adequate way to prove this not being a photoshoped image - the same issue most image posters on this site have.

*dies laughing*

Edit: Seriously, you said you knew what it was and there were STILL people going "FAKE LOLOLOL" and "OMG alien did they talk to you????1111" Just goes to show...

It's probably a bat-signal like seachlight lighting up the cloud from underneath. The cloud could be on its way down, then it becomes what we call fog. When it's close like that it can be sharply lit. Look at the light falling on one of the the buildings. It could also be lit up by the seachlight but not directly.

Looking at a blown up version of it, I thought it looked more like a spotlight on clouds. You can see a break on the top far left.