An account in Somme, France

On January 16, 1980 at 7:00 PM, witnesses spotted a particular luminous phenomenon in the sky. It was a very bright white ball located to the southwest in the sky. During the observation, the phenomenon changed colors and light intensity, changed color, and shrank or grew; threads seemed to come down from this object. No noise was heard during the entire observation by all the witnesses. The phenomenon moved away quickly and was lost from sight around 9:00 PM. One of the witnesses took photos that showed nothing, the film being black. According to the gendarmerie's inquiry with the weather station, no French weather balloon had been launched and reported in the area. It should be noted, however, that a few days earlier a foreign weather balloon had been found in another municipality. According to the star chart, Venus was particularly visible during that period (-3.84) and low on the horizon to the southwest. It also disappeared around 9:00 PM. These people probably made an astronomical observation of Venus.

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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.