Dashed

Just when I thought that I was on the verge of discovering something, this had to happen.

Hello Dr. Aufdenberg,
>
> I was taking a few pictures of Orion just now, and while
> previewing the pictures, I noticed that there were a few
> white flares and a number of circular looking flares around
> Orion's belt. Do you know what it could be?
> Thanks.
>
>
> Regards,
> Senthil

Look at the picture before reading his response. Zoom in if possible.



Hi Senthil,

What's your field of view? Are the three stars the belt of Orion?
What is your exposure time?

You may be overexposing the camera on the brightest stars and what you
are seeing are saturation effects around the brighest stars. There
is also a lot of dark current (thermal noise) in your image because your
camera is not cooled (although tonight to pretty cool!).

I'd say the "flares" are just copies of the three stars when the
camera was bumped or in motion when you open/close the shutter. One
set of "flares" is the beginning of the exposure, the other at the
end. The spacing of the "flares" is the same as the three stars.
These stars are so much brighter than any other nearby stars and
you see the affects of the camera's motion. There aren't enough
photos from the other stars to see motion that occurs during a small
fraction of the total exposure time.

That's my guess!

Dr. Aufdenberg

There goes my dreams of having an astronomical phenomena named after me =( But then again, it did sound extremely ridiculous from the offset. I need a big telescope!