Sighting in Foix, July 4, 1979

At 2 a.m., a person on their way home noticed a large orange-red mass in the sky, shaped like a shell. Frightened, the witness went indoors and kept watching the phenomenon for about two minutes. They heard no noise. The mass eventually vanished into the landscape. No other witness account was collected.

The case had first been rated C by GEIPAN and was reviewed again in 2008. The investigation found that the duration of the sighting, the shape, the size and the colour all matched the Moon as it sets, and that the Moon was indeed present in the part of the sky concerned. According to GEIPAN, the witness's eyesight was not the issue; rather, it was the way they interpreted what they saw, influenced by how they felt (tiredness, fear). The case, of low strangeness, is now rated A: a misidentification of the Moon.