[Swordmaker]

That does not at all explain various features of the image.

On the contrary, there are many clues in the photos that indicate artifacting due to inability of the camera's CCD to render the image properly because of overload. One of the most telling is the lens flare duplicates the solar disk visible but does not show the black object. If the black object were real, the flare reflection would also image it as a black object surrounded by bright light. The demonstrates that the CCD is capable of rendering the dimmer lens flare but fails on the direct image. The upper left telephoto image shows artifacting of pixelization in the wings to the left and right of the black disk where the CCDs cells are beginning to fail to respond. I could duplicate this image if I wanted to risk my digital camera. I don't care to put it at risk.

Richard Kimball, I recall you are a professional photographer. What do you think?

[Richard Kimball]

I haven't ever taken a shot of the sun high in the sky like that, only when there's cloud cover or shortly before sunset where the atmosphere causes enough diffusion of the light to keep from damaging the sensor. My guess is with Swordmaker. The first clue is that the object is directly in front of the sun in all the pictures. The second is that there's blowing out of the dark objects closer to the camera. In the lower right picture, for example the light blows out the power lines and makes the tower a light gray-blue, instead of a full silhouette. If it were an object, it would similarly have light bleeding over the edges of the object as the light pole and the bridge in the upper right photo. Finally, the object would have to be huge to create that size silhouette

This looks like a pixel blowout to me.