Check this out

[Infidel]

I caught this about 12:30am yesterday. There were about 10 cop cars and 2 firetrucks all congregated for some reason, and I'm taking pictures of an insect with my camera phone. Sorry for the low quality, it's the best my phone can do. The light was off to the right and I got as close as I could, about 5 inches away.

The colors are actually even more vibrant that this shows. Very bright greens and very dark greens. with that strange upside down golden crescent. I'll try to run this through gimp and maybe it does good color correction. Just for reference, this things wing span was as wide as the palm of my hand.

At first I was thinking it was a cicada but now I'm not so sure. It certainly doesn't look like the average cicada.

[ruisu81]

That's definitely an interesting one!

[Kashin]

That looks more like a cicada than a moth. What were all those cops doing?

We had two of these giant moths at my church one night. They were really friendly we played with them for like an hour. I'm sorry i've no better pictures my phone is poor as well in low-light. The moths were brown with red and yellow details. They had some pretty cool face patterns and their feet were sticky.

(This is NOT me. It's my friend Josh. I'm much better looking than him )

[Infidel]

Alright, This is my amateur attempt to brighten it up. For some reason increasing the colors increased the pixel size so the more I played with it, the more it started to look like an 8 bit picture. So when I finally did get the brightness and colors close to correct, it wasn't usable. The wall is white stucco and the nearby light is yellow.



as you can see, the typical clear wings and mesh pattern of a cicada is not visible. The wings look solid, but the body looks like a cicada, even from the side although I didnt' take a side-view picture. So my first thought was that it is a cicada, but when I went online and found NO cicada's with a solid looking wing, I started to doubt it is a cicada.

[Kashin]

If it's not a cicada or a moth, I have no idea what it could be.

[Mike Cash]

Best I can do with it:

[a_iwai]

I think it is moth as Kashin-san said.
This is Japanese moth called "ウンモンスズメ (Callambulyx tatarinovii)"

[Valatunda]

Maybe it is an alien spaceship or some sort of ninja weapon or maybe it is a new type of moth or something. I thought you could call it the Infidel Moth, but you have already named it George.

Anyway, I photo fixed and antiqued it.

[Infidel]

That's it. So I suppose it's definitely a moth. What is this Japanese moth that is supposed to be endemic to Japandoing in VB I wonder? The only problem is I could swear I saw the beady cicada eyes on the side of its head, but I guess I didn't really.

Wow, this turned out to be on topic after all. Guess we need to move the thread.

[Valatunda]

I am not too certain, the markings on George seem different around the head area.

[Infidel]

Hrm, I don't think it's the Japanese moth after doing some more research. It seems to be a Pandora Spinx the patterns match much more closely. And the pandora moth also is local to the area.

Good Job with the photo edit Valatunda.

[ruisu81]

I thought it was the Japanese one until I saw the Pandora Spinx photos. Nice job.

[a_iwai]

Yes, the maximum growing of the Japanese moth "ウンモンスズメ" is only about 2.5 inch. I thought that the moth in picture might be related species of it. And now, I learnt the true name of it, thank you.

[Kashin]

well, great! I must say the wing shape is so different from any moth that i've seen. Where are it's antennae?