Mystery Lights over Perth Hills

[PPI Brian]

A green square and a reddish round light to the left of it appear in a photograph taken while looking east over the Perth Hills towards Kalamunda, Australia, at about 7:45 Friday night. The photographer did not see the objects until the image was viewed on a computer.

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25901222-5017009,00.html

[PPI Tim]

I'm starting to hear the music to the PPI new year's eve video.

[PPI Karl]

I'm impressed, though, that the guy who submitted the photo to Perth Observatory just wants a practical explanation and doesn't believe he's captured an image of a UFO.  It's the newspaper that's using his pic to drum up UFO interest.  If ever you need proof that the news is manufactured . . . !

[Damian]

Even though the red light appears round, I'm seeing darker red corners which seem to make the red object about the same shape and size as the green object.  And I don't ever recall seeing something square up in the sky...it's a very odd shape to see in the sky.  Interesting photo.

[PPI Jason]

My guess is light defraction. I bet the light from the moon, or maybe some other unseenlight source, is hitting some imperfection on the lens (maybe a smudge or piece of dust) and then splitting the light in two like a prism (this happens with some telescope lenses during chromatic aberration). Maybe the light was split by the clouds to some degree? Just an idea. Especially since he reports that he couldn't see the lights at the time he took the photo. That, to me, says they weren't there at all but were a product of the photo production.

And a shutter speed of "over 2 seconds" If those were real UFOs then they would be red and green streaks unless they were BOTH perfectly still the entire two seconds. I'd have to defer to the expert on this one.

Brian, do you know if long shutter speeds tend to exaggerate the effects of chromatic aberration?