Sighting in Albon, May 25, 2017

At around 10:40 p.m., from their terrace, the witness noticed a fairly low light in the sky that looked white, yellow and blue at once. They heard no sound and saw no trail. They filmed it with a camcorder and, when they watched the footage, found an object with unusual shapes. The observation ended around 1:10 a.m., with the light still in the sky toward the north. No other witness account was collected.

The investigation found that the witness had observed the star Capella. At the start of the observation it was exactly where they had reported it, 15° above the horizon in the north-west (azimuth 320°). It then sank, as the witness described, and by about 1:00 a.m. stood 4° high, almost due north (azimuth 345°). The colors and the flickering are typical of a star low on the horizon, caused by atmospheric turbulence. The sky was clear, and the witness did not mention any star next to the light, even though Capella would necessarily have been visible at that spot.

Most of the strangeness came from the viewfinder and the recording. GEIPAN did not try to explain it further, since it was not seen with the naked eye and the effort required would not have been justified. Several causes are possible: the streetlights visible in the video can produce reflections in the dark areas, a strong zoom on a star, here a double star, can distort its appearance depending on focus and camera quality, and the witness may have zoomed in on a different light from the one that first caught their attention. GEIPAN classified the case as A: mistaken identification of Capella.