An account in Bouches-du-Rhône, France

In the night of August 6 to 7, 2018, at around 1:12 a.m., a witness on his outdoor terrace is surprised by the sight of a fixed luminous phenomenon facing him. The witness decides to observe this phenomenon with his binoculars and is stunned to see a luminous circle of different colors with, at its center, two very bright lights, red and yellow. The witness contacts the gendarmerie, then goes to bed at 1:30 a.m., troubled by this observation. At 5:05 a.m., he gets up, but the UAP has disappeared. No other testimony about this phenomenon will be collected. This testimony is illustrative of the panic that can be caused by mistaking a celestial body, especially when the witness uses binoculars to look at it. The witness's precise drawings make it possible to accurately reconstruct the observation direction, which is due south. Mars (very bright, magnitude -3.6) is there above the mountains as in the drawing. At 20 degrees of elevation in the sky, Mars stands out clearly from the mountain peaks, which do not exceed 5 degrees of elevation as seen from the witness. The latter (classically) overestimated the elevation in the sky (45 degrees) of the UAP. There is also Saturn 30 degrees further to the right (to the west), less bright (magnitude 0) but still brighter than the rest of the stars in the area, all of which leads the witness to say there were two very bright lights, red (Mars) and yellow (Saturn), with (normally) white stars around. Then the witness takes the binoculars and points them at Mars. A witness already victim of a misidentification of a celestial body is often even more so when he takes binoculars, which he often has trouble focusing on the celestial body (binocular artifacts) or which reveal oddities for someone looking at a celestial body through binoculars for the first time. The sky was clear; if the witness were scanning a UAP other than Mars, he would very likely have indicated the presence of Mars, given the quality of the locating skills he demonstrates in his drawings. Consequently, GEIPAN concludes with A: observation of Mars.