Comet Trails

Comet Trails are image trails that are left when a video camera pans across a bright light source. They occur because the image sensor in the camera has persistence - even when the bright image has moved, the sensor area left behind does not immediately return its output to zero. Thus, a fading trail is left behind, reminiscent in appearance to a comet, hence the name of this artefact. The commonest place to see these artefacts is in older music videos, captured with older analogue video cameras.

Queen-Greatest Video Hits Volume 1 14:11
Compare this image with the image below, which follows immediately on from this one. In the image below, the camera is still. In the above image, the camera is panning across a bank of bright lights, all of which leave image trails behind them.

Queen-Greatest Video Hits Volume 1 14:12