What’s that on the Gulfport tower cam?

SOUTH MISSISSIPPI (WLOX) - When nightfall occurs, something shows up on our tower cam in Gulfport.

Many viewers keep asking... “what is that”?

This thing shows up in the sky over Gulfport when the camera is pointed toward the east or southeast. The cam is pointed in this direction so that it can be ready for the next morning’s sunrise.

But, pointing the camera in this direction just so happens to face it in the perfect angle to get an interesting camera trick to occur: a lens flare.

See it for yourself. Take a look at this timelapse of our Gulfport cam from Sunday’s nightfall through Monday’s sunrise:

Do you see it? In that timelapse footage from our Gulfport tower cam, you can notice an object appearing in the sky.

There is nothing physically there. It’s just an optical effect called a lens flare.

This lens flare appears because there is a bright light (city lights in the streets) shining toward the camera lens. And that bright light is being reflected inside of the camera lens to create a lens flare effect in the video image.

You can see this for yourself with your own camera any day and any place. Just go outside and point your camera at the sun like this:

You can also see this with your own camera by pointing your camera at a mirror while the camera flash is on like this:

So, what is a lens flare? A lens flare is an optical effect that can show up in your pictures and videos when a strong source of light hits the camera lens.

This is commonly seen when taking a picture or video of the sun.

It can also be easily seen when taking a picture of a bright light at night like the moon or some other bright light (like street lights).

When a lens flare happens, various orbs and shapes can appear in your photo or video images. This effect is as old as cameras are and it has been around the entire time in pictures and videos taken all around the world.

You may be wondering why an entire blog article is dedicated to this topic. And the answer is simply... many, many viewers have been asking. So, hopefully, this will serve to answer many of the viewer curiosities out there.

If you’re still not convinced, simply do a web search for “lens flare in photo” and you should see many results with similar examples.

If you’re still not convinced after that, then there’s nothing more I can do to convince you. You’ll just have to go to bed every night believing that an unidentified flying object is hovering over South Mississippi every night in the exact same place. And when you walk outside to see it with your own eyes, you can never find it. Instead, you can only see it with our tower cam and only when our tower cam is pointed at a certain direction.

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