14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, a woman in Florida happened to spot a mysterious bright sphere hanging about close to the sun, high up in the sky.
The woman noticed the odd appearance while filming a sunset. She managed to capture it on film and then shared the video on YouTube. The footage is available after the jump, should you feel like checking it out yourselves.
In the video, the woman mentions that the bright sphere cannot be Mercury or Venus. It cannot be the moon either, seeing as this orb was elsewhere in the sky at the time when she shot the video.
Rather, the woman is tempted to think that the luminous orb might be Nibiru, a large planetary object that some think will one day come crashing into our planet from outer space and bring about doomsday.
At least so far, there is no scientific evidence that such a planetary object even exists, let alone that it will very soon collide with Earth.
The more reasonable explanation
The planets in our solar system are well documented by scientists, and this sphere spotted by the Florida woman over the Sanibel Causeway most definitely wasn't one of them.
More likely, specialists are tempted to think that it was an optical illusion known as a sun dog, a phantom sun, a mock sun or, if you want the official designation, a parhelion.
Such illusions happen when the air is saturated with ice crystals or maybe water vapors. As light bounces off these floating particles, it sometimes creates a reflection of the actual sun.
A similar occurrence was documented in Mongolia earlier this year, when low temperatures and an increase in air humidity combined to made it look like three suns were hovering over the country.
Depending on how far such sun dogs are positioned with respect to the actual solar disc, they can appear reddish in color, or maybe yellow, orange and even blue.
