Sighting in Les Abymes, January 17, 2019

On several occasions in January 2019, and again in January 2020, a witness noticed a moving light with changing colors in the night sky over Guadeloupe. They filmed it in several videos. The testimony comes from a single person and lacks detail, but the recordings provide usable material, so the GEIPAN rated the case as low in strangeness and medium in consistency.

In the videos, the object looks very much like a bright star affected by strong scintillation. When the air is unstable at altitude, this normally produces changes in brightness, apparent movements, and color shifts caused by atmospheric dispersion. These effects are stronger the lower the star sits above the horizon. The fact that the witness saw the object again over successive nights is also typical of an astronomical misidentification.

Cross-checking showed that the star Sirius lay exactly in the direction the witness observed, and that they had overestimated how high the object was in the sky. The colored flashes typical of this star match the reported color changes closely. The case was therefore classified A: observation of the star Sirius.