Sighting in Fréland, April 24, 1983

At 10:20 p.m., two witnesses noticed a luminous object above a mountain range, about the size of a tennis ball in apparent terms. To the naked eye it looked slightly oval and stayed still, with occasional slight oscillations. It was surrounded by a halo of white light. The object then dropped in three successive steps, and its color changed as it went down. One of the witnesses picked up binoculars and saw a sphere that was taller than it was wide, with very bright streaks across it. As it descended, the object finally vanished into the landscape.

The case, first handled at the time, was reexamined in 2013 at the initiative of a GEIPAN investigator, using new software tools and the experience gained since then. The review showed that the object was exactly at the position of Venus. Since the witnesses described a starry, cloudless sky, they would have mentioned Venus next to the object if it had been something else. The gendarmerie investigation had ruled out an astronomical misidentification, but information about Venus's position appears to have been passed on incorrectly between the gendarmerie and the observatory it contacted. The witnesses' credibility is not in question: they were misled by a particular phenomenon that disturbs perception. The case is classified A, an astronomical observation of Venus.