Hi Everyone,
A couple nights ago, on January 19th, 2024 at 9:13PM, I was outside in my driveway in Wickford Rhode Island. I had just returned home from my Mom’s, and when I got out of the car I looked up and admired the 22° halo around the moon despite the freezing cold. I took some photos with my night mode on my phone, and they came out really nice (I’ll share one at the bottom). It was the night after the moon had been in close conjunction with Uranus, and they were still pretty close- you can see this planet clearly in the videos I share. The moon was in a waxing gibbous phase. Then, I went inside, and as I was taking my boots off, I saw that a great blue heron had just landed on the tiny patch of mud that gets exposed with the low tide in the brackish canal outside my apartment. My boyfriend and I call the heron that takes this spot the “night G.B.H.,” because it uses the light of the nearby bridge to hunt. Usually night GBH is only there in the summer, it was the first time I had seen the GBH in that spot during the winter.
I am a birdwatcher, and I got so excited seeing the night GBH that I decided I had to go back outside in the cold to take photos with my nice camera. So I went back outside and took photos of the bird, then went back inside yet again. That’s when I started thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool to get a shot of the GBH with the moon halo?” So I went back out for the 3rd time with my phone, thinking I would take a video from a distance since I didn’t want to risk scaring the GBH away by walking up behind it.
This is when I saw the weird thing. —So I’m outside, filming the moon on my phone, and to my mild dismay- the camera is not picking up the 22°halo on video, it only worked on “night mode”. So I leave the phone focused on the moon, as stationary as I can, to try to get the focus to pick it up. It doesn’t work, but as I’m staring at my phone screen I see a tiny orb appear to the bottom left of the moon, it starts off making some weird erratic movements, then hangs stationary, then it starts moving away from the moon pretty quickly. The moon and Uranus remain relatively stationary since I’m trying to hold the phone still, so the little camera movements don’t explain it. I look up beyond my phone screen, but I can’t see the orb with only my eyes, although it’s showing up in real time on my phone screen. You can hear me murmur “what the f**k?” as the orb travels out of view. I was definitely a bit unsettled right in the moment, but I kept panning the camera to the left show the GBH which was my initial intention. Remember this was a freezing cold night, there was ice under my feet and there were no bugs alive to fly around. I also didn’t see anything with my bare eyes ( I would have seen a bug reflecting moonlight, especially an invasive winter moth with its lolling moth movements and wings- winter moths are the only flying insects around here that can survive those temperatures- they also don’t hang stationary in the air).
I went back inside for the final time, and I was kind of freaked out. It was literally just weeks ago when I researched a similar account of an orb shaped object on video only visible through a cell phone camera feed. This UFO was filmed on January 23rd, 2013, by a pilot in Costa Rica, Jose Daniel Araya, he filmed an orb flying near the plane he was on through his iPhone, you can view that video here if you want (I featured it on a medium post I recently shared here that was based on a reddit post I made last year “Costa Rican UFOs”) Jose’s UFO was seen under similar circumstances, he could see the orb in real time through his phone, but he couldn’t see it with his eyes.
I replayed the video, the orb was still there. Then I started messing with the brightness and exposure settings to see if I could see it even more clearly. That’s when I realized that even after the orb seemed to disappear into the dark in real time, it was actually still there, just not emitting/reflecting as much light. It stays in the frame for a few more seconds before shooting off the left side right before I panned the phone to the GBH. I made a version of the video with the brightness increased and a version with the brightness increased at half speed so the orb/object is easier to track. I will share these below in succession.
Needless to say, I looked out the windows quite a few times that night after replaying the video a bunch and seeing the object “hiding,” -not that it would have done me any good- since whatever it was was invisible to my eyes. It was a little creepy being home alone after that (my boyfriend was away and I had even just dropped off my dog with my mom). I sent the video to my boyfriend – who confirmed that it was definitely super weird, then I watched a comedy till I got sleepy to get my mind off the creepiness before heading to bed.
The next day, I showed my best friend and my family the video. As I was talking about it throughout the day, I found myself wondering out loud what my phone camera’s robot eyes could see that I couldn’t. So I looked it up. Turns out, most phone cameras can see in infrared, especially in the dark. If you want to test this, point your remote at your phone camera and click a few buttons, you’ll see a red light coming from the remote on your phone camera’s feed that you won’t be able to see with your eyes (I attached a video of this too with my remote). You can even use the phone camera method to search an Airbnb for hidden cameras by looking for red IR beams in the dark!
So there is a definite possibility that whatever my phone was picking up (and maybe Jose’s phone too) was only visible in infrared. It would make a lot of sense. I plan on setting up my phone on a tripod tonight (as long as it stays clear enough) and filming the sky/moon for a while to see if I potentially pick anything else up in IR. I’ll even watch the screen in real time for as long as I can bear the cold. If I find more stuff I’ll update! I also heard of some kind of trick where you can jury rig your phone to detect IR better with 3D glasses- let me know if anyone has tried this!
TDLR: I went outside to take a video of the moon and a heron, and while my phone was focusing on the Moon and Uranus I saw an orb of light moving erratically on my camera feed that I could not see with my eyes. Did some research, turns out phone cameras can see in IR- deduced orb/object was potentially emitting in IR, which is why I couldn’t see it with my eyes. Here are the videos, without further adieu! Let me know what you think!
submitted by /u/Amaranathine
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