As children most of us imagine that there are monsters lurking in the dark. I was never afraid of monsters under the bed as some are, but the closet was a different matter. The closet door had to be tightly shut. If it was even open a crack I was sure that I could see it slowly opening further and that some monster or ghoul was just waiting for me to go to sleep so it could come out and harm me. I guess in my child mind, such creatures could not open closed doors.

Maybe I was partly right. Perhaps there are things in the dark that we can't see with the naked eye.

I don't know how many caught Ian Punnett's Coast to Coast AM show on April 13th, but it was really amazing.

First, Ian had on Charles Ostman. Ostman is a technology analyst and I have heard him on the show many times and don't remember him being a UFO believer at all. He is what I would call a science guy. Maybe my idea of science is not yours, but Ostman has always been very anti-woo woo.

Apparently Ostman happened to be hanging at a UFO conference when Ed Grimsley let him use night vision goggles to see UFOs. Ostman said suddenly where there had been nothing to see with the naked eye there were 3 crafts. He described them as "round, hard-edged, metallic looking things." They weren't stationary; they were flying and completely silent. Ostman sounded completely astonished by this. Given his job he was sure he knew about all types of aircrafts (even the secret ones) and this was something he couldn't explain.

Ed Grimsley then joined Ostman and Ian during the second half hour and he had some pretty amazing things to say about night vision. However, I find Ostman's testimony more amazing because I would have never expected to hear such a story from him.

This whole "seeing ufos with night vision" concept is completely fascinating to me. I was really disappointed that Ian only kept the guests for 90 minutes.

It did make me wonder about some of my own photos. I have noticed that when I use night shot on my camera that I often pick up orbs. I know people say orbs are dust particles, but why are dust particles around more at night? Normally if I get an orb in a day time photo it is pretty easy to see that it is lens flare or something like that.

Also, the orbs in night photos are nearly always perfectly round. When I compare them to orbs that I know were caused by falling snow, they are quite different. Most snow orbs are not perfectly round, they look like what they are, a time smear of snow. Night time orbs are not smeary looking. They also do not always occur when it is dusty, say when the wind is blowing up dust. I ran that experiment the other night when it was really windy and the air was full of dust, not one orb in any of the 3 photos I took.

I am not saying there is absolutely something esoteric or UFO-related about orbs, but I will say that I do not believe they are caused by dust particles. I mention orbs because of the night vision topic on c2c. I am not sure how the night shot on my camera works, but it seems to me that it must in some way be similar to how night vision goggles work.

Last week, I bought a new night scope. I was hoping that it would be easier to use than the night vision binoculars that I have. I haven't got to play with it much yet, so I am not sure if it is or not. I do plan to continue to experiment with it and night shots on my camera. I will let you know if I come across anything interesting.