An account in Var, France

On January 21, 2007, a witness taking a walk in the early afternoon took several photographs. When the photos were developed, the witness noticed black dots appearing repeatedly in the center of the sun. The witness saw nothing unusual at the time the photos were taken. Following a TV program in 2008, the witness sent us the questionnaire and the photos. This observation case is the typical example of a strangeness arising from the reading of a photo or video and not perceived by the witness in real time with their own eyes. GEIPAN no longer processes these testimonies because experience shows that with sometimes considerable work, an explanation can be found through artifacts resulting from the functioning of the device, these being of various types and made more frequent due to the now massive use of smartphones. Some cases, like this one, are nevertheless processed and published for informational purposes. The present case is illustrative of a black sun phenomenon. This occurs when a camera (or a photo camera) is pointed at a scene containing a highly concentrated light source such as the sun's disk. (Note: it is not recommended to do this with any camera or digital photo camera for an extended period because the image of the sun's disk on a sensor can cause irreparable damage to the sensor as well as to the optics). Under these conditions, one might expect the resulting image to be uniformly saturated and therefore white in the image of the sun's disk or any other bright object in the scene. However, certain sensors (rather and generally of CMOS technology) actually expose these ultra-bright areas as BLACK, rather than saturated, as shown more particularly by the witness's photos 78 and 82. The link IPACO Expert Report gives a more precise description of the technological phenomenon. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as A: photographic artifact.