Brian Cory Dobbs

Okay.

Okay, so do we have the cosmic ray bursts?

Yes, okay.

See the little streak up there?

Yeah.

That's called a cosmic ray, right?

Okay, it's when a little photon of light somehow catches the camera sensor in a very particular way, and it renders us this little thin streak.

Now, this is an actual rover photograph on Mars, so it's black and white.

But if we were to get some more explanation as to cosmic rays and how they affect cameras, let's look to none other than astronaut Donald Pettit.

who photographs stuff from the International Space Station, he actually commented on this specifically.

Okay?

These are what cosmic rays actually look like.

Just a one-pixel, two-pixel wide thing, and it changes color because it's going through the red, green, and blue pixel CCD...

I forget what his explanation... Oh, go back one slide, Ryan.

He might say... Yeah, he says, multicolored as the cosmic ray moves between the red, green, and blue pixels.

Okay, the one on the left here in this image is a meteor.

The one on the right, it's hard to see on this image.

But anyway, thin streak.

That's what a cosmic ray looks like.

So if we go back to that UFO image, Ryan, does that look like a cosmic ray?