Sighting in Épinay-sous-Sénart, August 23, 1980

At around 3:30 in the morning, a witness at home, on the 4th floor, saw a very bright point of light that stayed in the same spot in the sky. They described it as a motionless star that had appeared in the east. The sighting took place on two consecutive observation days, 23 and 25 August 1980. On the 25th, the witness kept watching it through binoculars for about two hours, until it disappeared by gradually fading. The gendarmerie collected no other testimony.

The case therefore rested on a single witness, but the description was fairly precise, and the witness's sincerity and credibility were never questioned. It was originally classed "C" by the GEPAN, although the planet Venus was already considered a probable explanation. A recent re-examination found that the duration, shape, size and color of the phenomenon matched Venus, which was very conspicuous at the time (magnitude -4.26) and was indeed located in the part of the sky being observed. According to the GEIPAN, the witness's visual perception was not at fault; rather, it was their interpretation of what they saw, shaped by how they felt (tiredness, nighttime observation). The case, of low strangeness, is now classified "A": a misidentification of Venus.