Understanding the different causes of ORBS

19th January 2017. Reading Time: 9 minutes Photography, General, Stuff paranormal investigators need to know. 8514 page views. 5 comments.

From dust through to moisture, bugs and even ghosting, here is how and why your camera or smartphone produces 'ORBS'.

I recently saw a survey online where a group was asking its followers to choose from three options of what causes ‘ORBS’. There were 3 options to choose from – Spirits, Dust and Other. Over 50% of the votes were for dust and this didn’t surprise me. Whenever someone presents a photo on social media of an ‘ORB’ the usual response from people is that it is just dust. Yes in a lot of cases it is in fact dust that has caused the ‘ORB’ but there is also other natural phenomena that can also cause orbs thanks to your trusty camera. Here is an easy guide to help you distinguish what kind of ‘ORB’ you are really dealing with and how your camera is playing with you, and there is nothing paranormal about them!

Dust and moisture ORBS

This is the most common explanation for an orb and is particularly common on photos that are taken with smartphones. In a nutshell, a dust or moisture orb appears in your photo because the flash has reflected off a particle of dust or moisture. They are common in areas where there is a lot of dirt, old buildings (which most haunted locations are) and of course if it is raining or there is moisture in the air. In a smartphone or a regular digital still camera, the flash sits pretty much next to the lens of the camera. When the flash fires, the shutter on the lens opens in order to take the photo. These cameras usually shoot with a small aperture. Aperture refers to the hole in front of the lens that lets in the light.  It is only open a small amount so that it can have a greater depth of field. It's so that the cameras are able to take a picture of a beautiful landscape and everything will be in focus, not just the object closest to the camera. (This is what you use a wide aperture for, meaning the opening will be larger.  This often means the object closest to the camera is in focus while the background is blurry).

In all smartphones today, the flash is directly next to the lens. This means the entire area that the lens is shooting is going to be lit up directly by a flash. This is why smartphones tend to pick up a lot of ‘orbs’ in dusty old buildings.

When the flash fires, the area that it is lighting up usually crosses over with the area the lens is taking a photo of. Where these two cross over, if there are any dust or moisture particles in the air, the camera cannot properly focus on them (more on this below) and it appears as an orb.


Dust is small and difficult to see with the human eye if it is not illuminated by some sort of light source. You know when you have a beam of sunshine coming through your window and you can see all the dust particles in the air? Sometimes it is horrifying to think about what we are breathing in. The other thing is that the dust particles you see floating through the air are incredibly small. Why then on a photo does it show up as a big round ball? It all has to do with what photographer’s refer to as the ‘circle of confusion'. It is just that – really confusing. When a photo is taken particularly using a small aperture (to make sure everything is in focus) things appear to be more two dimensional so there is no concept of space. When you are shooting with a wider aperture, you are able to focus more on the person or thing you are shooting and the background becomes a bit more blurred. This creates the perception that there is a distance between the background and the subject you are shooting. Unless you own a DSLR (or your smartphone has advanced camera settings) you cannot adjust the aperture which means on most smartphones and digital cameras it will automatically shoot with a small aperture. Because there is no perception of depth, you can’t look at a photo and tell for sure exactly how far back into the room an ‘orb’ is. In all likelihood, it is right in front of the camera. The closer to the camera it is, the harder the camera tries to focus and make it into something which means the larger it will appear in the photo. 

A special side note, to avoid as much as possible capturing dust or moisture orbs, use a DSLR camera with an external flash mounted on top which is much further from the lens (especially if you bounce the flash off the ceiling by pointing the flash at an angle upwards not throwing your flash against the ceiling). The area that the lens is shooting is a lot more separate than the area that the flash is lighting up so you are a lot less likely to capture a dust or moisture orb. Moisture usually only shows up when it is raining so to avoid this type of orb, try not to shoot in the rain.

To identify a dust orb, you are looking for something that appears to be fuzzy. These ‘fuzzy’ orbs are often mistaken to have faces in them. Unfortunately, these are not the faces of spirits, it is an act of pareidolia. Your brain is trying to make sense of all the ‘fuzziness’ and dots inside the ‘orb’ and makes you think you can see a face. If you look at any dust orb zoomed in you will most likely eventually see some sort of face. A moisture particle orb is more solid without the fuzziness. It may be transparent or it may be fully illuminated, it really depends on how close to the flash it was. So now that you know what causes dust or moisture orbs, here are some examples of what they look like.

A ‘Dust orb’ I caught during an investigation at Milanos Tavern. We were in a dark upstairs building with no electricity so needed to use a flash to take photos. An iPhone with flash was used to take this shot.

This was a shot taken outdoors when there was a light sprinkle of rain. As you can see the flash has reflected off the water droplets. Some even look like rods which are a dead giveaway that it was raining. This was taken with an iPhone using a flash

Here are some general pictures which you can find online of dust and moisture orbs. I wish I knew who to credit for these because it is a great tool but this is viral all over the internet so I don’t know who the original poster of these images was.

Image not mine

Image not mine

Ghosting ORBS

This kind of orb appears in most cases as a green orb or 3 transparent orbs. It is caused by a form of lens flare which is reflecting off the camera lens at an angle. I personally find these a huge pain because if you are shooting with a camera using a viewfinder, you usually don’t realise that you have caught one until you review your photo and they ruin a lot of perfectly good photos. I shoot in a lot of old, rumoured to be haunted buildings as do most people who capture these photos. Most of these buildings are very dark inside and rely on strong window light or a bright lamp to light up the room. The beam from this light only has to hit your camera lens at the wrong angle and bam, photo ruined with that pesky green orb.

Just when you think you have a great shot, you end up with this green dot. It is not paranormal, it is the light from the light source (in this case the lamp in the room) hitting the lens at an angle.

A lot of people claim coloured orbs are angels or fairies. I personally believe it is more likely to be a form of lens flare because the quality of your lens and the way your camera compresses the image etc all can be a factor in this and cause the orb to have some sort of colour.

To read more about ghosting, here is a more in-depth article I wrote explaining it all. “Just because it is called ghosting doesn’t make it paranormal”.

It’s not just green dots that are caused by this reflection. Transparent or slightly coloured orbs (there is usually more than one) are also caused by this form of lens reflection.

Bug ORBS

The same concept as dust or moisture particle orbs is in play, a flash is reflecting off a bug. It is close the to camera, it cannot focus properly so the camera turns it into a blurry looking shape because it is close to the camera and it can’t focus on it properly (the whole circle of confusion thing). You have a pretty good understanding of how this all works now so I don’t need to go on but will leave you with an image I found online which shows the different types of ‘bug orbs’ that are out there.

Image not my own

So now you know the main causes for orbs. The next time you see a photo with an ‘orb’ have a look at the conditions and instead of automatically saying ‘it’s dust’, have a real look at it and importantly the conditions under which it was shot. The most important thing to know was if a flash was fired. If you can get your hands on the original unedited image, the EXIF data will be able to give you a simple yes-no answer as to if the flash was used. There are several different ways to access this data on a computer. Sometimes a simple right-click and properties or get info is enough or sometimes you need to open it in a photo program to get more detailed information. It depends on what kind of computer and software you are using. The EXIF data tells you what settings were used and even what kind of camera. If someone is being dishonest about what and how the photo was taken, this can catch them out. If it is all a bit too hard and you don’t know how to access this information, head to exifdata.com it is a great website where you can upload a photo or a url link if the photo is online (such as Facebook) and it will access this information for you.

When you combine light reflection, pareidolia and lens flare, you can see why photographic evidence of the paranormal is quite an unreliable source. This does not mean that shouldn’t go out and show photos. Knowing what I know about all of these elements, there a still a couple of photos I have seen that I cannot debunk. It doesn’t mean it is paranormal and it doesn’t mean it isn’t, it means I cannot explain it. As long as you are going through the process and eliminating all of these factors, you are doing the right thing as an investigator. If you are left with something you can’t explain, at least you have the knowledge to tell someone why it isn’t all of the things we talked about above, and then the REAL discussion begins

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Comments

  • Bertha Thompson 4 years ago

    My husband died Nov. 5 so I went to my daughters house for Christmas. I was asleep in a very dark bedroom and something woke me and I looked straight ahead and could see a very very stinging light shining light coming through the door. It lite up the whole room. Than a ball came through the door and it came straight in a line and came straight over me and my husband sat at and old fashion kitchen table I had never seen before. Had clothes on that I knew and his glasses with a big smile. He was alone. Stayed a few minutes and left in straight lines and through the door with the bright light still shining. Never happened before or sense. The light was so bright.

  • Hannah 4 years ago

    A lot of paranormal investigators choose to disregard orbs completely during an investigation because their natural causes outnumber the paranormal ones. AS a paranormal investigator, researcher, and enthusiast, I can say a paranormal orb is rare and hard to prove to be paranormal. If an orb were to be paranormal, it would have to have something significantly different about it than any other orb. A moving orb would also have to be analyzed to see if it was dust or an insect, once those two options are crossed out, then you can at least say it is a strange phenomenon. It is nearly impossible to have a 100% paranormal orb because it is nearly impossible to prove it.

  • Greg Pocha 5 years ago

    To Alexis, May I ask how often you dust your home? Whatever the number, why? Your home is dust free, isn't it?

  • Living Life In Full Spectrum 6 years ago

    No matter how clean a place is, there are millions of dust particles present in the air. Unfortunately what you are capturing on camera is not a ghost, it is the dust particles especially when you say there are thousands of them.

  • Alexis 6 years ago

    My apartment has always been clean dust free in all videos and camera shots but all the sudden there's thousands of orbs during all over nicely floating and a grey mist with it. Isn't that ghostly or no?