Strange looking ‘Triangular shaped object’ photographed in the night sky identified?

We had an interesting case submitted to us the other day. After some initial evaluation I determined the ‘anomalous object’ in the sky which importantly had not been noticed with the naked eye at the time of taking the photograph was most likely to have been a reflection within the camera called ‘lens flare’ caused by the very bright light from the street lamp in the shot.

See below for the written account submission, our evaluation & response and photographs.

The witness’s personal details have been redacted for confidentiality.

Dear ###,

Thank you for contacting BUFORA with your sighting report and photograph, and thank you very much for your kind donation to our voluntary organisation.

Looking at your photograph I could immediately see the bright light from the street lamp, which made me consider a possibility of lens flare (which I note you did consider yourself), so I applied a test to check the validity of this hypothesis by drawing lines from corner to corner to find he centre, then drawing another line from the bright light source to the mystery object and checking if a) the line goes through the centre and b) if the bright light source and the mystery object are the same distance away from the centre and the result is a YES.

So because a lens flare reflection will always be an equal and opposite distance from the centre (which these are) it very much looks to me as the mystery object in the sky is a lens flare reflection of the bright streetlamp.

When viewing from your location on Google Street View I can see the streetlamps and it looks to me that the shape and orientation of the lamp tops (thinner more pointed end towards the left) is also consistent with that of the object in the sky in your photograph, therefore In my opinion this is highly likely to be what it was.

This would also explain why the 'object' was not visible to the naked eye at the time of taking the photograph.

I do hope this evaluation was of some help to you?

Kind regards

Mark Easen

BUFORA Investigations.

Lines added to find centre and check for equal & opposite reflection