Lens flare
An optical artifact produced when bright light scatters within a camera lens, often appearing as geometric shapes, halos, or streaks. The most-common single explanation for purported UFO photographs and videos.
A lens flare is an optical artifact produced when light from a bright source — the sun, moon, streetlight, or other strong illuminator — enters a camera lens and scatters internally before reaching the sensor or film. The result can appear as bright geometric shapes (often hexagonal or circular), halos around the bright source, streaks, or apparent secondary objects.
Why it matters for UAP
Lens flare is, by some considerable margin, the most common single explanation for amateur UFO photographs and videos posted online. The pattern is recognizable:
- A photograph or short video showing a bright sky or partially-cloudy day.
- An apparent disc, sphere, or rod-shaped “object” not noticed by the photographer at the time of capture.
- The “object” disappears or moves consistently across frames in a way that mirrors camera motion (because it is, in fact, an artifact of the lens-source geometry).
How to identify lens flare
Several diagnostic features:
- The “object” is opposite a bright source. Lens flares appear on the line from the bright source through the optical center of the lens. If you draw a line from a bright object through the apparent UFO and out the other side, the source is on that line.
- The “object” moves with the camera, not with the scene. As the camera pans, the flare stays in the same relative position to the bright source, not to the scene.
- Geometric shape consistent with the aperture. Many flares show the polygonal shape of the lens iris (often hexagonal or octagonal).
- Color shifts. Flares often show chromatic shifts (rainbow halos) due to differential refraction.
- Photographer didn’t see it. When the photographer looked at the scene with their eyes (no lens between them and the sky), the “object” was not present.
Council usage
In Council case files involving photographic or video evidence, lens flare is the first mundane explanation considered. A case is not seriously considered as anomalous until the lens-flare hypothesis has been actively excluded by examination of source position, camera motion, and the photographer’s own observation.
For more on the broader debunking practice, see Field Guide FG-007 — Identifying mundane explanations: the Council’s debunking checklist.