Sighting in Guipel, January 13, 1978

At around 5:40 p.m., a woman driving and then her husband watched a luminous phenomenon move slowly across the sky. It was rectangular and orange-red, and the witnesses noticed a halo along the long sides of the rectangle. No particular noise was heard during the sighting. The gendarmerie found no marks on the ground and gathered no other testimony about the phenomenon.

The case was later re-examined. It was considered consistent, since it rested on two witnesses and a precise description, and the witnesses' sincerity and credibility were never questioned. The phenomenon described closely matches a sun pillar in its duration, shape, size and colour. The Sun had also just set below the horizon, exactly in the direction the witnesses indicated, and the winter season and a few clouds favoured the appearance of a sun pillar. The witnesses' visual perception was not at fault; what was at issue was how they interpreted what they saw, influenced by their surprise at a rare luminous phenomenon. GEIPAN classified the case as A: a misidentification of a sun pillar.