Below is a picture taken by Hector Siliezar with his iPhone at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza:
Very Alien vs. Predator.
Still, Arizona State University’s Mars Space Flight Facility researcher Jonathon Hill had this to say about the odd lens flare, “the ‘light beam’ only occurs in the image with a lightning bolt in the background. The intensity of the lightning flash likely caused the camera’s CCD sensor to behave in an unusual way, either causing an entire column of pixels to offset their values or causing an internal reflection (off the) camera lens that was recorded by the sensor.”
Siliezar’s camera EXIF data shows that the photo in question was taken on July 24, 2009 at 2:00:31 PM. The image was captured at 3.85mm focal length, F/2.8 and with a exposure time of 1/436 seconds. Hector claims that no one saw the beam shooting into the sky as he was taking the photo, which falls in line with Hill’s Technical assessment of the shot.
An apparent iPhone 5 camera shot was recently revealed, showing a more advanced imager than that of the iPhone 4.