So what does a dust orb look like? Take as an example Image 1 below, here you see a typical orb as would occur in a lot of photographs that people take. This type of orb is only visible in flash photography and has a bright outer ring (not always complete), and a random internal structure. But this orb is man made. If you click on the picture a wider view will be seen containing literally dozens of orbs (all green bordered images can be clicked). The orb in question is the one just to the left and above centre. The source of these orbs?....flour, a small pinch blown from an open hand a metre in front of the camera. This image was taken with a Kodak CX6200 camera then enhanced using Kodak Easyshare. The image of the flour was not taken immediately but a minute after the flour was blown. In Image 2 below you will see why as this was how the flour appeared just after it was blown. At this point the flour is one metre away and appears as tiny specks but after a minute the specks are now large orbs as the flour has dispersed and some has drifted towards the lens. Basically any dust orbs have to be close to the lens otherwise they appear as bright dots.

Image 3 shows a typical indoor orb positioned over the speaker. This image was taken indoors using a digital camera with a built-in flash. The Image 4 on the right shows a close-up view of this orb which reveals a very bright outer disk just inside of which is a darker disk then another light disk inside that and so on as you move inwards. All told the structure is similar to that of an onion. A lot of the orbs shown in the first image at the top of the page show this concentric circle structure or else a bright outer ring and a bright centre with a dark ring in-between.

Image 5 shows a plethora of orbs and the hand that produced them (again click on the image for a larger view). As you can see the hand is very close to the camera lens and has produced all sizes of orbs from bright dots to large disks. An expanded view of some of these disks can be seen in Image 6 on the left. If you look closely at the disk it has the same light/dark/light bands as can be seen in Image 4 that appears on the right of the last paragraph.

To try to explain these rings a series of photographs was taken of a small point in space from different distances. The point in space was the end of a needle. Most of the photos revealed nothing except the outline of the needle but some were orientated just right so that light reflected off the end of the needle. Whilst maintaining this orientation the needle was moved closer to the camera lens from about 500 mm away up to less than 10 mm. When the needle was some way away all you got was a photograph of a needle but as the needle got closer interesting things were seen. The most interesting are shown in Image 7 and Image 8.

The camera used has a fixed focus lens which can focus from 30 cm to infinity. It is only when the object is too close to the camera (a few centimetres or less) so that it is out of focus that the ring effect occurs. This effect can also be seen when using an astronomical telescope to view a star. When the star is out of focus it appears as in Image 9 below, a bright outer disk complete with faint inner disks, just like the dust orb. The concentric rings are caused by diffraction which occurs as a result of the camera lens. See our page on Diffraction for a brief explanation.

Flour is not the only source of orbs. Image 10 shows the same effect using talcum powder. If you click on the small image you will see the surroundings as well as the orb which is shown in the thumbnail. In this image you can actually see the cloud of powder being blown off the hand which was two metres away. You will notice that the cloud is all fine particles, no orbs, yet the image contains orbs. This is due to the fact that just before this image was taken (less than one minute before) a photograph had been taken of talcum powder which had been blown one metre in front of the lens. At first the one metre cloud of talcum powder was just that, a cloud, but a minute later it had spread and some particles had come close to the lens, hence the orbs.

If you still believe that the non-artificially generated orbs are true orbs then check out the two images below. If you click on the picture on the right (Image 11) you will find no less than eight orbs. A photograph taken just before revealed zero orbs. The difference between the two - in the first photograph the chair was empty, in the second the chair was occupied. In the enlarged image the grey patch is still the chair’s occupant not a ghost, he has been blanked out to protect his anonymity. If you now click on Image 12 you will get the same photograph but in this one you will find that the occupant of the chair has been completely erased as if he never sat in the chair. Yet the surroundings are the same and the orbs are all in the same positions so are these true spirit orbs as they have not moved? Sorry, no! Altering of the picture to erase the chair’s occupant took just a short while to do and demonstrates that you can’t believe everything you see in a picture, especially a digital one. This was just a demonstration, in all other images on this web site they are original data, at most slightly enhanced (generally by adjusting the exposure) but never otherwise doctored.

These images are not the only ones possible and we will continue to investigate reasons for orbs and you should test your own camera so that you do not fool yourself. One thing that should be noted is that all of these orbs require a light source (flash, street lamp etc.). All are simple disks with little structure controlled by the vagaries of the wind and usually uncoloured.