An account in Jura, France

On May 8, 1979 at 4:40 a.m., a female motorist saw a luminous phenomenon that intrigued her. A glowing ball, orange-red in color, with "corkscrew antennas," moved and then disappeared quickly toward the southwest. The gendarmes' analysis indicates that it could not have been the moon, given a check made the next day at the same time which showed that the moon was more to the "left" of the vehicle than the observation made by the witness. In fact, a precise analysis of the sky shows that on May 8 at the time of the observation, the moon was indeed in the axis of the observation and disappeared at the time of the observation. It is therefore obvious that the witness observed a fairly bright moonset. The presence of clouds probably caused reflections or glows, and the rapid disappearance reported by the witness is easily explained by the fact that she herself was driving in a car. The check made on May 9 at the same time is not conclusive, since the moon was then further west and higher on the horizon, which allows it to be recognized without ambiguity.