Sighting in Gernelle, January 17, 1982

At about 1:30 in the morning, two witnesses at home watched for a long time a large, orange ball giving off a very intense light. One of them, looking from a window facing due east, thought it was sitting in the fields on a hill about 300 metres away. It lit up the whole block of houses, and the light was so strong that nothing around it could be made out. This witness then saw the object move away toward Sedan, with a shape that reminded them of a flying saucer, and a sort of orange vapour stayed on the ground for a few minutes. The other witness saw an object lift off the ground without making out its shape: a grey-white gaseous layer surrounded an orange centre whose colour gradually faded as the grey took over, and then the object left. The two witnesses then went to bed. The next day they went to the spot and found no trace on the frozen, snow-covered ground.

The gendarmerie report is imprecise, and the witnesses could not be contacted 35 years later. GEIPAN considers the Moon the most probable explanation. The phenomenon stayed stationary for about 15 minutes and looked like an enormous orange ball, and the witnesses never mention the Moon even though it was in that direction: at 1:30 it was at azimuth 102°, almost due east, and only 2.3° above the horizon, which usually gives it a reddish or orange colour. Its low height explains the impression of an object on the ground. The gaseous layer described suggests a veil of cloud or haze partly hiding the Moon, and its thickening may have been taken for the object moving away. The direction of Sedan (about 128°) is not far from that of the Moon (105° around 1:45), and the Moon rose about 3° in 15 minutes, which fits the object lifting off.

The hypothesis cannot be confirmed with certainty: without the witnesses' exact address, a nearby obstacle cannot be ruled out, and with no weather data, a fully overcast sky cannot be excluded, even though the report mentions a clear sky. GEIPAN therefore classifies the case as B: probable observation of the reddish Moon.