An account in Moselle, France

On January 27, 1982, at around 7:15 PM, an entire family in a car on the CD 910 road, in the municipality of Guenviller (57), observed for two minutes a particular object in the cloudy sky. It emitted a light and moved slowly without making any noise. It was shaped like a half-sphere. Two of the witnesses returned to the scene around 7:30 PM, but the object had disappeared. On the map representation (see map), the witnesses' route is shown in black dotted lines, and the observation direction in blue. It can be seen that the observation direction is generally in line with the road, slightly to the left or right, depending on the phases of the observation, which gives an azimuth between 242 and 244 degrees. An astronomical check tells us (for Nancy, at 7:15 PM) that the Moon was at azimuth 244, at 4.5 degrees elevation (see sky chart), and appeared as a thin tilted crescent. Since the witnesses do not mention the Moon in their observation even though it was exactly in their field of view, it is indeed the Moon they observed, deceived by the low elevation of the celestial body, and by some low clouds that masked part of it, giving it a cigar or half-sphere shape. Apart from the estimates of the object's size, the witnesses' account is consistent with this hypothesis: a tilted saucer shape, which moves from the right to the left of the road depending on the vehicle's progress and direction, and which stops when the vehicle stops. The object's disappearance corresponds to the Moon's progressive setting and/or a cloud passage. This case, after being classified as "D," is classified as "A": observation of the Moon at its setting.