An account in Haut-Rhin, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases classified at the time which are now being re-examined, with the sole aim of being more relevant in the conclusions. At the initiative of a GEIPAN investigator, the case previously named LAPOUTROIE (68) 24.04.1983 was studied again in 2013. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigative experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification explained in a document (see Investigation Notes). On April 24, 1983 at exactly 10:20 PM, two witnesses saw above a mountain range a luminous object the size of a tennis ball. During the naked-eye observation, the object seemed slightly ovoid, static with occasional slight oscillations. It was surrounded by a halo of white light. The object then descended in three successive stages, which caused a change in color. One of the people, equipped with a pair of binoculars, observed a sphere taller than it was wide with very bright veins on the object. It disappeared into the landscape during its descent. The new investigation shows that the UAP was exactly at the location of Venus. The sky being described by the witnesses as starry and cloudless, it is not possible that they would not have mentioned Venus next to the UAP if the latter were not Venus. The Gendarmerie investigation had rejected the hypothesis of a possible astronomical misidentification (a poor transmission of information concerning the position of Venus at the time of the observation seems to have occurred between the Gendarmerie and the astronomical observatory contacted). The credibility of the witnesses is not in question, and moreover they were misled by a particular phenomenon of perception disturbance (see the investigation notes). This case is classified "A": astronomical observation of Venus.