Sighting in Bernaville, January 16, 1980

At around 7 p.m., several witnesses noticed an unusual light in the sky: a very bright white ball in the south-west. During the observation it changed color and brightness, and seemed at times to shrink and at times to grow. Thread-like lines appeared to hang down from the object. None of the witnesses heard any sound. The phenomenon moved away quickly and was lost from sight at about 9 p.m. One of the witnesses took photographs, but the film came out completely black and showed nothing.

The gendarmerie checked with the weather station: no French weather balloon had been launched or reported in the area. A few days earlier, however, a foreign weather balloon had been found in another municipality.

According to the sky chart, Venus was particularly conspicuous at the time (magnitude -3.84) and low on the south-western horizon. It also set at around 9 p.m. GEIPAN concluded that the witnesses had probably observed Venus, hence the class B rating.