Mysterious Beam of Light

Is the camera in night vision mode such that the frame rate has been slowed down to capture as much light as possible? If so I have seen captures like that from my cameras that I believe were just a bug that zoomed though close enough to the camera such that I only saw reflection from the IR lights as a trail of light. Also it looks like the light in the far room is right in line with that so it could just be a reflection of that on the lens.

This is in real time as far as I know, yes it has infrared.....you can see a night light on in the kitchen ceiling off to the right, that's why it's so bright in the kitchen....the beam though is in the dark part of the room not more than a few feet from the camera...the night light cannot be seen by the camera directly...you can see through the beam...

It looks like a reflection off the lens to me. Can you trigger the camera to take a picture in the same lighting conditions with as little in the shot as you can and see if you get the same thing?

Well when movement is detected, I'm guessing that is triggered by changes in light patterns, the camera takes a 12 sec video recording, this picture is from that video...I can look through the camera at any time and have often taken a look at night, it's the same every night, the camera position doesn't change....the camera can not see the light in the kitchen directly....

The beam appears parallel so my first thought is that it’s a military or police helicopter with a high tech laser that showed up on the infrared spectrum in B/W mode of the camera.

There ARE all kinds of fancy tech out there for scanning properties to look for drug or chemical frequency signatures; they are run by computer software which automatically captures screenshots, GPS locations and other details which are emailed to an operations center for analysis, no big secret at all.

Either that or something simple like a lost alien ship mistook your camera's IR light for one of its buddies and was trying to communicate with it.

I hope they don’t make babies.

I'm thinking it could be a smear on the lens is diffracting light from a source in the kitchen. Here is another example:

http://copernico.co/spectacular-lighting-for-camera-shots-for-house-design/photography-portraiture-lighting-camera-shots/

It's possible that it is a light in the kitchen that is the source and what triggered the camera is unrelated. Just a guess.

They're here.....

For comparison here is a screen capture just after the beam....

I'm thinking the beam was indeed a reflection from the aluminum door jam to the right...it was momentary because the lens autocorrected....best guess so far...

Seems like the beam is not actually in the room. No lighting on anything else in the room seems different between the picture with the beam and the after picture except for the beam itself. Seems like a beam in the room would have some reflected light from other surfaces.

What is the dark small projection from the ceilng between the two flourescent light covers in the kitchen?

That is actually the lens for the fluorescent light, you can see the first one not as dark, they are separated by a solar reflection light that is round....

The thing between the two flourescent light fixtures is what I was talking about.

The 'beam' of light does seem to come from the 'solar reflection light'. If the solar reflection light is a tube from ceiling to roof with transparent/transluscent caps and reflective interior lining, then a bright light outside the house from just the right angle could have caused your phantom beam.

The beam does line up with the solar tube, that could be it.... possibly a helicopter off in the distance....alright another possibility...

Perhaps it's an April 1 joke?

On April 2 ..?

I watched the X-Files marathon this weekend, so you probably don't want my opinion.

Cosmic ray?

I'm going over there today, I'll look for any evidence of extranormal activity....

Also look for a cob web in front of the camera

On further inspection I found nothing, no cobwebs, no evidence of anything....no bugs....nothing..

I've seen similar things happen with IR trailcams.

A bug flies by close to the camera (or something small falls in front of it) triggering the camera to take a photo. The close proximity of the bug makes it brightly illuminated by the IR LEDs, and out of focus, and also makes it appear as though a beam of light suddenly appeared.

if you can put your camera into video mode, you'll have a better notion of what goes on when you're not there.

This is a screen capture from a video, I don't think there are any bugs flying around in the family room...

Bremsstrahlung radiation from a muon or something similar?

Oh, of course!

Why didn't I think of that?

It's happening again: "Out of nowhere it would pop. The weird part is that the pop wasn't inside the receiver. It would pop about 2 feet away. It was because of this I could not for the life of me figure out where the popping was coming from and it took a long while to narrow down the source. It was loud too and sounded like the pop from a bottle rocket. Every once in a great while I would catch it out of the corner of my eye and it would look like a small flash in mid air. It would happen once every few hours to once every few days."

Think you are on the wrong thread.

https://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/119185/Weird-Phenomenon-With-Old-Stereo-Receiver

Nope. Just reiterating a 'similar' thread from a few days ago. Hence 'it's happening again.'

Since when are bottle rockets loud. The finale of the 1812 overture is loud!

[Still a nice cross reference to another thread.]

It looks like ir refraction off one of the light covers in the kitchen area. Is it possible that temp or pressure fluctuations caused movement in the cover or at the camera for just the right moment?

Move the camera manually to try and recreate the flash.

The beam appeared for less than a second in the video, nothing is moving...The only light other than the ir source from the camera is a weak 30 watt light up in a cove against the kitchen wall above the sink...the light is shaded from the ceiling and can only reflect light at an angle down...Looking from the camera you cannot see the light, it's behind that wall sticking out....the only other lights in the kitchen are 2 ea 4 ft fluorescent fixtures mounted flush in the ceiling....both off....The sliding glass doors open into another room, no lights, shades drawn...The notification was due to movement detected triggering the video to start recording...the light beam appears immediately after the recording starts....and then nothing for the remaining 12 seconds...

12 seconds of video, just curious is it a Wyze camera?

Yes Wyze camera...

Yes. I'm suggesting the camera IR reflection off one of the 2x4 light cover lens?

Well supposedly the range is about 15 ft for the ir, and the covers are about that far....It might be possible...OK that's a maybe...but the movement in the plastic is not so plausible...4:30 in the AM should be stable by then...

There didn't happen to be, "an 80's or so stereo amplifier with a radio and cassette deck built in," in the room somewhere was there?

If so, maybe Jack Puddin can "shed some light on this"!

No just a wifi and modem, and Bose bluetooth speaker...

Was there perhaps a power glitch in the area that caused a false trigger and the flash could be an artifact of a small power EMP caused by the house wiring when everything was de-energized,re-energized suddenly?

But you say the flash lasted for a full second....hum...that does not fit..

Any thunderstorms nearby?

Alternatively, it could be a covert spy agency checking up on you......

I just remembered working on a high speed scanner camera and it was driving the technicians nuts because there was so much noise in the image.

The interface cards,power supplies,A/D card had all been swapped out, prior to my arrival,and the problem remained.

I closely examined the camera and enclosure which contained a cooling fan.

There was a horse-hair stuck in the enclosure frame in front of the lens from a previous cleaning with a horse hair brush,and it was waving in front of the lens at a very high frequency because the fan was causing it to wave like a flag and was creating noise in the signal.

It could not be seen when power was on, it was moving too fast and I only spotted when I did a very close inspection of all components with power off.

Look for a loose hair near your camera or in the area.(Doesn't have to be a horse hair...)

Yeah,I know,I have some screws loose.I'm gonna Loctite them one of these days,as soon as I finish reading that book on procrastination.

My WAG (and all proposals so far are just WAG) is this is just a remnant of a jumping spider silk that has whafted into the detection range to trigger a camera capture but this silk is outside of and probably closer to the camera than the "in focus" focal region of the camera optics. This spider is probably now enjoying a few tequilas at the area 51 bar and grill with its more friendly kin.

Sorry about the intrusion , we were just testing the laser sights and didnt mean to alarm you....

We didnt burn a hole in the roof did we ?

Is that a glass table in the foreground,near the bottom?

If so,the beam could be a reflection from the camera's IR LED's as it was triggered.

The edge of the glass could create a strange effect as the light exited the edge of the glass.

Are there any lights that come on for a second or two when an object is detected?

The item that triggered the camera does not have to be directly in front of the camera lens,and could be outside of the lens angle of capture.As others have said,perhaps an insect or spider triggering the camera sensor

Of course,I almost forgot,it could be an errant strand from the magnetic flux ropes that connect the Earth and Sun, a very rare splash from the bow shock wave of the Earth's magnetosphere colliding with solar plasma.

All planets with a magnetic field seem to have these ropes.It seems that the sun is keeping in contact with it's "children.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/12/massive-magneti.html

or: "Captain,we are being scanned...."

I suspect that the best clue lies in the dots of light in the sliding glass mirror to the right. Does the window below your camera face the street or a driveway? Perhaps someone pulled into the driveway and the headlights momentarily hit the mirror. Another scenario would be someone shining a flashlight into the room and onto the mirror. In either case the reflection caused the flaring that you see.

If you want to be really paranoid, it could be someone flying a drone equipped with an IR camera looking for properties to burglarize. Don't laugh, I have firsthand experience with that scenario; drones flying outside windows on dark nights a few hours before sunrise! A few zaps from my IR flashlight/strobe and they haven't been back.

In any event, if it doesn't recur, then your system acted properly and alerted you to the transient motion of a light beam.

Just throwing this out there,… do you live near a road, where it may have been a reflected light from a car, that may have reflected a number of times compounded by maybe some type of weather phenomena, such as heat, humidity or fog at the time and interacted with say,... dust within the room.

^{You been hitting on the glitter again?....}

Cosmic ray was suggested, perhaps not seriously. In the photon detectors that we manufacture we get random splashes of light even in total darkness. We believe that these are from cosmic rays, perhaps your camera can detect them.

If it happened to drive past through the CCD it may only appear that the beam of light is in the middle of the room, when infact the cosmic ray just passed through the CCD.

I was serious.

To be honest, that's what it looks like....