Sighting in Bertignat, July 3, 2014

Around 5:30 in the morning, several witnesses noticed a very bright light that seemed to hover above a nearby military base. Its shape resembled a crescent. One of the witnesses filmed it. The point of light moved slowly across the sky and the sighting lasted a long time, which suggested a celestial body. In the video, the light appears low on the horizon.

Investigators checked on a map the direction of the Pierre-sur-Haute military base from the observation site and found an azimuth of about 72°, east-northeast. An astronomical check showed that the planet Venus was very bright that morning. The changing shapes and colours the witnesses described are common for a celestial object low on the horizon: they come from scintillation caused by turbulence in the atmosphere. The witness found the light strange because of its position above the military base, but this was a purely chance alignment that caught their attention. Coincidences of this kind often make a phenomenon look odd when it would seem ordinary in another setting. GEIPAN classified the case as A: the planet Venus at sunrise.