An account in Bouches-du-Rhône, France

On Thursday, August 30, 2007 at around 7 p.m., a witness, looking at the sky through the window, had his attention drawn by a glint similar to that of a star in the clear sky. He takes his camcorder to film. The light intensity decreases and the witness sees a small dark object that becomes just a dark moving spot. The witness, intrigued, moves to another room to follow the object, zooms with his camcorder and sees 4 black points or squares surrounding the bright glint. The observation lasted less than 25 seconds. Only one testimony was collected. The phenomenon observed by the witness is a very bright luminous point, most likely a reflection of the sun on a flying object. The video of the phenomenon produces 4 black rectangles surrounding the white point: these elements are clearly artifacts, that is, parasitic effects of the video sensor and compression. The strangeness of this case is therefore reduced to the passage of a flying object reflecting the sun. The wind blows strongly that day (Mistral) from the N to NW sector (see Météociel). As the object's movement is from NE to SW, it is very unlikely that this is an object carried by the wind. On the other hand, an airplane or helicopter could have acted as a mirror toward the sun, which is low on the horizon (due west, at 8°). The strong wind would have masked the noise of the craft. The investigation was carried out too late to confirm this hypothesis. GEIPAN classifies this case "C" due to lack of information and cross-checking.