Sighting in La Roche-des-Arnauds, January 26, 2015

At 18:55, in the early evening, the witness noticed an orange ball in the sky. It looked much brighter than Venus and twice as large. Intrigued, they tried to take a photo about ten minutes later, but the phenomenon had vanished.

A very clear sketch in the witness's questionnaire shows what they saw: below the Moon, an object they took for Venus and, in line with it, another large point that was much brighter and red, which struck them as strange.

GEIPAN's investigation checked these details against a sky chart. The object just below the Moon was not Venus but Mars, only slightly brighter than the stars of the Big Dipper. Lower down, along the same axis, was Venus, about four times brighter than Mars that day. Close to the horizon, it looked redder, as any celestial body does in that position, and about fifteen minutes later, once it had set, it was no longer visible. The case, which was very well documented, was classified A: it was definitely the planet Venus at setting.