Multiple witnesses in La R�union, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases that were classified at the time and that are now being re-examined, with the sole aim of being more relevant in the conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification. This observation case is one of the cases classified as "D" and previously named SAINT-ANDRE (974) 1997. On August 15, 1997, around 5 a.m., a traveling vendor (T1) doing his rounds in the municipality of Saint-André observes a luminous object stationary about forty meters from the ground. He subsequently notes that the phenomenon follows him and becomes afraid. Upon arriving at Bras-Panon, he wakes his sister (T2) and her family, and all observe the presence of the UAP. Since that date, T2 says she regularly observes the UAP when the weather is clear but much farther away. T1 gives no information on the position of the UAP; it can only be deduced from T2's statement. The described phenomenon shows strong indicators in favor of an observation of an astronomical object, indeed: - For T1, one notes the traits of the "following UAP" (a perceptual illusion due to the witness's own movement, when the origin of the UAP is very far away, as in the case of a celestial body). Indeed, the UAP seems to stop when the witness is stationary, and resume its course when he starts again. This perception generates strong emotion (perhaps with the idea or hypothesis of dealing with an "intelligence"). - For T2, one notes that the UAP is in the same place in the sky at the same time for several days. What is described also includes strangeness that could in appearance oppose the celestial body hypothesis: T1 perceives the UAP (at least at the start of his observation) in a shape "almost like a turtle," "with headlights." T2's perception of it is different and less strange: "My brother came to wake me around five, five thirty, and he told us look in the sky, there's a big light. He told us he had seen it up close, that it had passed over his head. He was very afraid when he arrived at the house. My husband, my son, and I looked in the direction he pointed to (Salazie) and we observed for a very long time a very sparkling light, sometimes it moved to the right, sometimes to the left, the light sometimes was very strong and sometimes it weakened." However, T1 is quite certain that T2 and her family are observing the UAP since he says: "I told them what I had just seen, and they came outside with me accompanied by their seventeen-year-old son to observe the object. Everyone saw it, it did not move from its spot, the shape was a bit hard to make out, but the two headlights were clearly visible. We stayed observing it until five fifty, at which time I left to continue my rounds. The craft never moved from its spot. The rest of the family stayed to observe until the device disappeared; they told me it had plunged all at once behind a cliff, of which there are many in the Salazie area." For T2, what distinguishes the UAP from a star is this: "it's far too big, looking at it, there are like rays around it," plus possibly the fact of the movement described above. But T2 also specifies this: "Since that date, the mysterious thing is always there, when the weather is clear. Around six thirty when night falls, we see the shining phenomenon. It is always in the same place, and we observe small colored lights (red, green, orange) that seem to leave the ball or come from that direction and head toward the sea, and after that we see no more. We see this thing very high in the sky and we cannot distinguish exactly what it is. When T1 came to wake us, we looked at the phenomenon, it was at the same height as we see it on other days. I could not draw it; I think that with binoculars we would have more chance of seeing better and distinguishing what nature the object is made of." What T2 describes, as present every day at 6:30 p.m. and then disappearing, is like the 5 a.m. UAP ("the mysterious thing is always there") and therefore located toward the West (T2 describes the 5 a.m. UAP "in the direction of Salazie," which is toward the West at Azimuth 250° from T2's location). This is unequivocally Venus, which indeed becomes visible at 6:30 p.m. low on the horizon and then sets. T2's confusion with Venus is fairly classic (see website www.geipan.fr search for cases with keyword Venus), often caused, as here, by the strong brightness and changing colors (crossed by the atmosphere's light rays at low elevation). The UAP seen by T2 and T1 at 5 a.m. on August 15 is described by T2 as present in the evening at 6:30 p.m. And indeed, at 5 a.m. in the same place in the sky as Venus at 6:30 p.m., there is Jupiter (barely 20° apart between the two celestial bodies, similar elevation around 20°) and Jupiter shines brighter than all the stars, almost as much as Venus (magnitude -2.8 versus magnitude -3.9) and can present the same aspects of changing glows (see the reconstruction document). The UAP seen by T1 and T2 at 5 a.m. is therefore with complete certainty Jupiter. The other particular strangeness described by T2, slight movements of the UAP, is a well-known perception phenomenon called autokinetic (see the article on the autokinetic effect). The strong strangeness described by T1 (turtle with headlights) finds no definitive objective explanation, without being of a nature to call the Jupiter hypothesis into question given the coincidence of the other elements. T1 indicates that during the joint observation with T2, the shape was hard to make out but that "the two headlights were clearly visible," whereas T2 describes only a sparkling light whose glow was strong or could weaken. There may have been cloud veils, causing for T2 the variation in glow and for T1 a blurry and variable shape (perhaps less during the first observation) around the glow. The double glow seen by T1 may result from an optical aberration caused by eyeglass lenses (it is not known whether the witness wore them); this aberration is classically caused by vehicle windows and windshields, which could have operated in the first observation phase and fixed the memory also in the second phase, if it is not the glasses for both phases. T1's strong fear (probably linked to the illusion of the following ball) and described by T2 ("he was very afraid when he arrived at the house") could have altered the quality of perception and activated interpretation mechanisms (craft, headlights). This observation is interesting in more than one respect: - the strangeness that the observation of a very bright celestial body can create due to the physical or human phenomena that can be added (splitting of colors by the atmosphere, shapes elicited by a cloud veil, autokinesis, illusion of the following ball, etc.). - differences in perceptions and experienced strangeness among witnesses for the same observation. - possible contamination effect of strangeness. It is likely that T2 found stranger what was seen every evening at 6:30 p.m. after the alert created by her brother with the 5 a.m. UAP. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as A: observation of Jupiter.