Sighting in Authon-du-Perche, March 10, 1980

One evening in March 1980, at about 9:30 pm, gendarmes at one station heard over the radio, on another station's frequency, that a motorist driving on the D13 between Les Etilleux and Nogent-le-Rotrou had seen an unidentified aerial phenomenon. Several of them scanned the sky in the direction given but saw nothing.

At 10:10 pm, a gendarme closing the shutters of a bedroom at the barracks saw, together with their spouse, a luminous ball in a clear sky towards Les Etilleux. The gendarme's superior and other gendarmes were called, and all watched the object, ball- or disc-shaped, change from bright orange to red and move in successive jumps with pauses until it vanished; the exact time is not recorded. At about 10:40 pm, four gendarmes set off by car towards Les Etilleux, then towards Coudray-au-Perche, before returning. On the way they noticed a dark red luminous mass. Stopped at the place called "Moulin Neuf", they again saw a bright oval object, motionless, silent and at low altitude. The report describes it in two parts: a lower third with dazzling lights, and the rest with mostly red-orange lights and red dots scattered along one horizontal line, all surrounded by a halo. No other witnesses were found in the places they passed through.

GEIPAN had the gendarmerie's preliminary report, without individual statements, and a private investigation report by the Groupe de Recherches Cosmographiques of Le Mans, whose collection conditions GEIPAN does not control and which added nothing decisive. The motorist's sighting was left out for lack of information. GEIPAN identified three phases. The first, seen from the barracks, was very probably the planet Venus, low on the horizon and visible that night; atmospheric turbulence, a group autokinetic effect and optical flaws (one witness's astigmatism, the equipment's aberrations, poor focusing of the binoculars) explain the mistake. Class A. The second, three red-orange lights seen during the drive, and the third, the object seen while stopped, are class C: data are missing (azimuths, elevations, angular sizes), and the report pools the testimonies without distinguishing witnesses, which weakens its consistency; the private report is also confused and contradictory.