Sighting in Braux, December 1, 1979

At around 7:35 p.m., the witness, a butcher, was driving home in a van after a day at the market. On a winding stretch of the D110, a large, very bright ball suddenly appeared on their left. It changed from white to red, then from orange to yellow, and gave off a shrill "beep beep" sound. Badly frightened, the witness sped up, but the object followed them for about 2 km while the van was travelling at roughly 70 to 80 km/h. It then vanished abruptly. The gendarmerie took no other testimony. The case was widely covered in the media at the time and was first classified D.

A new investigation was carried out, first with digital tools and then through an on-site reconstruction on a date in the Saros cycle, when the Moon, Sun and Earth return to their positions on the day of the sighting, in similar weather. At the start of the journey the witness had mentioned the full Moon, but did not mention it afterwards, even though at several points along the route it would have appeared very bright in the direction where they placed the phenomenon. These points match the places the witness described to the gendarmes. The ball's supposed path matches the Moon's apparent path relative to the bends in the road, and its sudden appearance and disappearance fit the Moon's visibility from the road.

The context heightened the surprise: the Cergy-Pontoise affair was at its peak, and the person said to have been abducted had not yet reappeared. The witness was alone, far from any house. Their description is typical of cases where the Moon is mistaken for something else. Nothing supports the objective reality of the noise. The intestinal blockage suffered in the following days was probably caused by stress on a pre-existing condition, with two similar earlier episodes. GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of the Moon.