Sighting in Châteaudouble, January 1, 1977

Between 7:30 and 7:45 pm, two people were driving along a local road and went up and down it once. They noticed a very bright white light at low altitude, to the south. It looked broad and stayed almost motionless. It then rose quickly and vanished, still toward the south. No sound was heard during the long observation. The witnesses spoke of a dizzying speed and of a departure like a shooting star, and one of them felt as if the car were going backward. According to one of them, the object left about two minutes after they flashed their headlights. A third witness, traced by the gendarmes, had noticed nothing that evening but described a sighting made a year earlier.

The case, first classified D, was re-examined. The gendarmes' photos and reconstructions showed that Venus lay within a degree or two of the direction of the phenomenon (234°, not due south as the witnesses believed). It was descending toward the top of the hill by the end of the observation. The near-stationary behavior over a long period points to a celestial body. The changes in brightness, caused by the atmospheric haze and the fog present, could be read as movement in distance, and the scattering of light rays could create an impression of a broad shape or of an object sitting on the hill. The disappearance matches the passage of thicker fog or cloud, and the apparent reaction to the headlights was coincidence. Only one witness described a non-radial movement. GEIPAN classified the case as A: an observation of Venus.