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Perhaps nothing in the realm of ghost hunting has created controversy as much as orbs. They show up, usually in night flash photographs, as round balls that appear lighter than whatever they are in front of. They can also appear indoors in a photograph. It doesn't matter whether you use a film or digital camera. You can still get orbs in your pictures. So what are they?

Skeptics blame them on dust or pollen and indeed that does explain some of them. They seem to show up more frequently in pictures taken with small compact cameras. They also seem to appear most commonly, there are a few exceptions, in pictures where flash has been used. There may well be a reason for this.

Consider the position of the flash and the lens. Most small cameras due to their compact design have the flash just a couple inches from the lens. This means that any dust particle which floats by can easily be very close the lens and still be well lit by the flash. The dust is well inside the camera's depth of field limitations and as such will be severely out of focus. Plus, by being so near the light from the flash will be very strong which causes a well lit dust particle and a prominent orb.

By contrast a larger SLR camera often uses a flash attachment mounted on a hot shoe. Some even support remote flash capabilities. You may get orbs with these cameras, but they are generally smaller and much fewer since the flash and lens are much farther apart than they are on a compact camera. As a result the dust particle which is directly in front of the lens probably will receive little if any direct light from the flash and will be much dimmer or not seen at all. It is only when you get some distance away that the light can hit the dust and cause it to reflect. But then the dust is much closer to being in focus and as such will probably just appear as a small speck or not at all.

But what about Those That Show A Form?

That is a result of what is called a chromeric aberation. This condition occurs because light travels at a different speed through glass than it does through air. The colors which make up light are broken apart because of this much like what we see when light passes through a prism. The reason for the difference is because a lens is not a consistant thickness. That is how they focus light. Better cameras use what are called multi-element lenses which use several pieces of glass to minimize this problem. Cheaper cameras don't, which is another reason the orbs more often appear on those cameras.

As the light passes through the lens it is bent by the curvature of the glass and also altered slightly in speed. The light waves interact as they travel setting up combining and opposing waves which leaves a pattern when the light strikes the film or CCD imaging chip. Thus, out of focus, with a pattern of lines, we get an orb. It's nothing paranormal, it's explainable by physics and the behaviour of light through matter.

There are also conditions which can cause orbs on both digital and film cameras. CCD imaging chips can be affected by energy fields which will cause brighter pixels. Film may have flaws which will develop as spots or orbs. These conditions generally are not that common but have been known to occur, so you need to be aware of them. These orbs generally don't have the patterns and are brighter. Yet they don't shine by their own light and do not cast or cause shadows. Shadows being present is one way to tell what could be a paranormal orb from a dust particle. Dust does not shine by its own light and as such cannot cause shadows.

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