Sighting in Beynes, May 24, 2010

At 10:30 pm, from the first floor of a house, a witness noticed a very bright yellow point in the sky that did not move. They called their parents, who saw the same thing. Two photographs were taken with a digital camera. No particular noise was heard. The sighting lasted 45 minutes, until the witness went to bed.

The witness was puzzled because they said they had already seen other luminous phenomena from the same house, without giving precise dates and in a different part of the sky. No other testimony was collected.

According to the GEIPAN investigation, what the witness saw that evening was almost certainly Venus. The other repeated sightings were probably other celestial bodies, Mars and Sirius, which were very visible in April in the southwest. The three bright points seen through binoculars were most likely an optical aberration or an effect of atmospheric turbulence, which is very common with very bright stars and planets. The witnesses may also have seen weather balloons, by day or early in the night, released regularly from the Météo France centre at Trappes, 12 km to the southeast. These are sometimes released in "trains" and can suddenly "go out" when the sun disappears behind the horizon at high altitude. The case is classified A: astronomical observation of Venus.