Sighting in Avignon, July 17, 2014

Shortly after midnight, around 12:15 a.m., a witness noticed a yellow-orange point of light in the sky, close in color to the stars. It followed a very unusual path: a straight line, then a descent, a U-turn, and finally a zigzagging climb, before vanishing very quickly. No other witness account was collected.

The investigation relied on several objective elements: the time and duration of the sighting, the azimuths at the start and end, the good visibility of the ISIS 1 satellite, its exceptional apparent magnitude, and the "micro-nystagmus" effect (an autokinetic illusion). These point to the witness having probably seen the star Arcturus, followed by the ISIS 1 satellite. However, one important part of the account does not fit this hypothesis. It could be a confusion or a false memory, but there is no convincing evidence to adopt that explanation.

GEIPAN classified the case as C (insufficient data): nothing allows the ISIS hypothesis to be confirmed, nor the complex movement of the light to be verified.