Decoding the Blue UFO in the Sun Photo

The green orb that appeared in the SECCHI spacecraft's photo of the Sun has led many to believe that it is the product of aliens.

The image of a green ball appearing in front of the Sun has many people worried that it is a UFO. Photo: NASA.

A photo of a large green sphere appearing in front of the Sun is circulating online, causing many people to worry that it could be an unidentified flying object (UFO). However, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has just explained that this is just a camera accident, Independent reported yesterday.

The images were taken by the SECCHI spacecraft, which is tasked with monitoring the surface of the Sun and sending images back to Earth. According to NASA, in rare situations, the STEREO image processor on the SECCHI spacecraft was overloaded, creating inaccurate images. It confused the images between telescopes.

"Images from the Heliospheric Imager (HI) telescope are created by stitching together multiple exposures, which sometimes results in 'double exposures,' where data from multiple telescopes appear in the same image," NASA explains.

So the image being shared is actually two photos of the Sun superimposed on top of each other. While this has not been confirmed with certainty, this is the most likely explanation.

Also, the image is not necessarily blue. In fact, it is a colorless image processed through a blue filter, which results in the color of the Sun in many telescope images being different from what we see from Earth.

According to VNE