What is it?

[Mike]

There is a round object in these pictures and I'm not sure what it is. My guess is that it's the moon out of focus but if so I don't understand the ring inside. I did no PP processing other than converting from ARW in DXO (with defaults) and resizing in CS4. Any ideas?

Picture

DSC01230_DxO_raw.jpg (173.27 KiB) Viewed 3272 times

100% Crop

DSC01230_100_raw.jpg (75.87 KiB) Viewed 3272 times

Mike

[Mike]

Here is another picture from the same lake at about the same time.

Picture

DSC01231_DxO_raw.jpg (154.28 KiB) Viewed 3270 times

100% crop

DSC01231_100_raw.jpg (85.29 KiB) Viewed 3270 times

Thanks for any ideas,
Mike

[aster]

Hi Mike,

I can't say really. Shouldn't the intensity of white be thicker if it were the moon or moon behind a circular/round cloud?

I attached shots from a few days ago and no ring effect seems to be visible when the moon is behind a cloud. Maybe it's a typically ring-like /tubular cloud due to wind turbulence much like the people can make when they smoke?

Yildiz

[David Kilpatrick]

It's lens flare created by a single droplet of something like oil or water inside or on the front of a lens, picking up light which is otherwise dealt with by the lens coating. Sometimes this can be caused by a tiny chip in the lens glass (normally the front element, not the back). More often it's a droplet of liquid. The sun is just a bit beyond the lens shade and the field of view in the pic, but still able to shine on to this and cause a small flare mark. The circular effect is caused by diffraction, I would guess you used a small aperture.

David

[bossel]

My closest guess would be some serious sensor dust. There are several small spots and that big one. Definetaly not the moon. Try to give the sensor a cleaning!

[aster]

It's lens flare created by a single droplet of something like oil or water inside or on the front of a lens, picking up light which is otherwise dealt with by the lens coating. Sometimes this can be caused by a tiny chip in the lens glass (normally the front element, not the back). More often it's a droplet of liquid. The sun is just a bit beyond the lens shade and the field of view in the pic, but still able to shine on to this and cause a small flare mark. The circular effect is caused by diffraction, I would guess you used a small aperture.

David

In the light of what David just explained, I believe there's yet an other one like that but with less intensity due to its position and place in the frame...

For what it's worth here are the crops from your photo.

Yildiz

[Mike]

I would guess you used a small aperture.

Both were f/22 as I was tring to get the maximum DOF.

The sensor is very dirty, I would normally clean up the sky with with DxO but I wanted to post it unaltered.

Mike