Var, France · 2014-12-18 · from the GEIPAN archive
On December 18, 2014, around 9:00 PM, two witnesses are intrigued by a luminous phenomenon in the sky. Observed while zooming with a camera, the object seems to be several colors and moves in all directions. The witness describes a kind of star larger than average and blinking, finally identified as a very mobile luminous object, like a kite. The observation lasts one hour. From a place near the train station, the observation direction is indicated roughly: "above Draguignan," which corresponds to an azimuth of 335° to 360°. It should be noted that the city of Draguignan is not directly visible from this location: the witness's azimuth estimate is probably approximate. The star Vega, a very bright star, is visible at 8.4° elevation and at an azimuth of 317° at 9:24 PM. Contacted by phone, the witness will indicate that he saw the same luminous object several evenings in a row at roughly the same place. The observation of a luminous point for nearly an hour above the horizon, several evenings in a row, very clearly suggests the observation of a star. The color changes are due to scintillation caused by atmospheric turbulence; the observed oscillations are also due to scintillation, but also to the autokinetic illusion or autokinesis, a perception illusion frequent when observing a luminous point in the dark (see the perception of the movement of a luminous point in the sky). Since the observation direction is not precisely known, the identification of the star is not certain. GEIPAN classifies this case "B": probable observation of a star above the horizon; Vega seems a good candidate.
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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.
Anomaly