Thank you for that information, laresident. It is always good to hear analysis from someone with expertise relating to whatever it may be. Certainly I have no emotional or other attachment to a paranormal explanation of the Avebury orbs. In fact I tend to be quite sceptical of such interpretations, and sometimes wonder about the strength and resilience of some people's need to believe that they have photographed ghosts, spirits, Jesus, Elvis, the reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse, or whatever it may be this week.
But when you mention raindrops, do you feel that these were on the lens or in the air? There was some showery rain around that night, but I remember confining photographs to the dry spells. Perhaps there were still stray drops about.
You obviously have a lot of experience relating to photography including development processes. There are two other pictures in my collection that are puzzling. The first is of a mound - possibly Roman, perhaps a little later - in Morden Park, London. Apparently hovering several feet above one side if the mound is a pure white, shining, not-quite-perfect disk or sphere. Several points about this:
(1) I visually saw nothing unusual while taking the photograph;
(2) the disk/sphere is quite unlike most of the orb images that appear on the web, which mostly resemble the Avebury ones - semi-transparent, multiple, often overlapping. However the Morden whatever does resemble an "earthlight" image, dated 25th September 1982, that I noticed posted on the "International Earthlight Alliance" website;
(3) it is kinda spooky.
While I am quite prepared to be told that the Morden light is the result of some film or development fault, the second image is another matter altogether. A few years ago, in the Black Mountains in western Wales, I saw and managed to photograph what I have ccme to call a "rainbow ball". As the photo shows, it was a day of mixed sun and showers. Suddenly I saw, in the distance but clearly, what seems to have been an unusual type of rainbow, not far from ground level. Unusual, firstly because it was round rather than elongated and curved. Also, the colours were churning in a way that I had previously only seen in the lightshows of certain first generation psychedelic bands. Yet they were rainbow colours. And - except for the breathtaking dynamism of the "ball" - the best photo pretty much captured what I saw. Since then I have done some research on atmospheric light phenomena generally but have found nothing that resembles this. Nor does it seem to be discussed in the recent "earthlights" literature by people like Paul Devereux.
I do not yet have these photos digitally scanned but will do shortly. All this stuff is bubbling because I have written a commentary on each of them that I am going to post on www.earthlights.com. Meanwhile there has been a lot by way of interesting and positive response - your own included - to my original Avebury orbs posting here, so I will e-mail copies to Mod.Ant. as well, to see what people make of them. Any thoughts would be very welcome.
Thanks again,
Treeman
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