Sighting in Bédoin, January 14, 1985

Two witnesses saw a luminous phenomenon after 5:15 pm: a smooth sphere about 3 metres across in apparent size, whose colour shifted gradually from white to orange. At times it became dazzling. It moved slowly and silently, seemed to follow their vehicle, and then disappeared. Twelve days earlier, on 2 January after 9 pm, a third witness had noticed a glow that stayed still. After the gendarmerie investigation and the transfer of the file to GEIPAN, the two observations had been treated as a single case and classed D, with no explanation.

The re-examination separated the two events. For 14 January, the description matches the Sun close to setting, orange, seen through cloud: a smooth sphere, sometimes giving off dazzling light, with rapidly changing brightness and colour, and with disappearances and reappearances as the clouds moved quickly past. The Sun was indeed in the direction of the sighting. The apparent movement is explained by the witnesses' own motion, through the illusion known as the "following ball": a fixed celestial body seems to accompany a vehicle holding a roughly constant heading. The witnesses, who were not familiar with the place, most likely failed to recognise the Sun while stopped. It could not be confirmed that the sky was clear enough for the Sun to be visible, so the explanation is very probable but not certain. GEIPAN classed this case A: mistaken identification of the setting Sun.

For 2 January, the pale orange glow matches Mars, whose position and movement agree to within a few degrees. The sighting probably did not seem very strange to the witness, and may have become more so after they learned, twelve days later, of the other observation, described in far stranger terms and by military personnel. GEIPAN classed this case A: mistaken identification of Mars at setting.