An account in Doubs, France

On February 17, 1980 at around 8:45 PM, a witness observing the sky noticed a very bright point that intrigued him. This round point was fixed, bigger and yellower than the other stars. The observation lasted more than 10 minutes without the point seeming to move. No witness was found by the gendarmerie to provide further information. However, the local press reported that in the area, other witnesses made the same observation. After checking a star chart, we note that in the indicated direction, Venus is particularly visible (magnitude -4.01) at this time of year. Venus's height above the horizon is 8 degrees instead of the 20 degrees indicated by the witness. Taking into account a possible margin of error regarding the indication of the object's height, the favored hypothesis is an observation of Venus. Many observation cases are also reported during this period.

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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.