I agree with both of you. Here's the thing. It (IMO) IS a speck of dust in the camera. By his own admissions, he took a lot of pic's at the time. He has other pics of the same area taken at the same time (generally speaking at least). Yet this "object" isn't in any of the others. Why is that?

Two possibilities for this. One, it was moving and wasn't there for any previous or subsequent pictures. In which case, something that large probably would have been seen. Maybe not, but probably would have. So this is at best unlikely.

Second, it's a speck of dust in the camera. Now you ask, why isn't THAT in other pictures too then? As I said, the guy took a lot of pics. Most likely, since it was taken with a digital camera, it most likely also was a fairly high end camera as well. Supporting this conclusion is two factors. First, he takes a lot of pics with a digital camera. So the guy likes photography. Which means he probably would have a fairly decent camera to do it with. Second, looking at the pic, it's a fairly high resolution as it can be blown up quite far to see the object in the distance. So the resolution is there to allow that. All this means that it was MOST LIKELY a higher end camera. Now, being a higher end camera, it would have a self-cleaning mechanism. Digital cameras do now, to prevent this very thing from happening. They aren't perfect, but they do a great job overall. Since this "object" doesn't appear in any of the previous or subsequent pics taken with the same camera, my conclusion is that it is simply a speck of dust that got missed by the cleaning mechanism only to be removed before the next pic was taken.

The other part that I intentionally quoted by NYMM may sway my conclusion a bit, that is, I agree with him in that we are not being visited by extraterrestrials. IMO, that is simply a mass public induced fantasy. Humans on this little insignificant planet is not that important. Get over it. We are not the center of the universe. As far as celestial objects go, Earth is very, very boring. Why would they come here? Point being, because of the mass hysteria about UFO's, it is a common leap of faith to say this or that is a "UFO" because there's no obvious explanation at the time when in fact there is a simple logical explanation inconceivable by the uneducated public. Yes there are a very few cases that are hard to explain. All others are usually due to a misunderstanding of science. Note that I say that those few are hard to explain, not inexplicable.

In any event, decide what you will about the pic. My .02 says it's simply a speck of dust.

-G