An account in Alpes-Maritimes, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases classified at the time as type "C" cases, which are now being re-examined, with the sole aim of being more relevant in the conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification explained in an investigation note. This observation case is one of the cases classified as "C" in 1980 by GEPAN. On January 1, 1980, between 6:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., a motorist on the A8 highway in the east-west direction observed a fixed luminous point toward the west in the clear sky. Observation with binoculars allowed the witness to describe this very bright point as a ball of string through whose strands black squares could be glimpsed. The witness took photographs of the phenomenon, but the negatives later handed over to the gendarmerie were transparent and blank, with no image. No other testimony about this phenomenon was collected. The described phenomenon presents many common characteristics (observation duration, size, color) with a perfectly known astronomical object: the planet Venus. Moreover, Venus was indeed present in the area of sky observed, although the witness does not mention it. It is not the witness's visual perception that is in question, but the interpretation the witness makes of their observation through their feelings (astonishment, night driving). In GEIPAN's current classification, this case of low strangeness is classified as PAN A, an observation linked to a misidentification with Venus.