Sighting in Monétay-sur-Allier, December 5, 1998

At 19:45 one evening, a family of three saw a long horizontal line of light under an overcast sky, level with the eastern horizon. It seemed to be made up of very bright red globes. After about thirty seconds, it appeared to move forward and backward, then vanished suddenly. No sound was heard during the observation. Two witness statements were collected.

The observation was made along the axis of the house's driveway, which is 15 m long and 2.5 m wide and gave a good reference for estimating the direction of the phenomenon: an azimuth of about 65°. The witness's drawing shows the phenomenon above the hedge at the far end of the garden, which allowed its elevation to be estimated at around 4°, assuming the observation was made from the middle of the driveway. At 19:45 the Moon was exactly there (elevation 4°, 66° East according to Stellarium).

GEIPAN explained the misidentification by the cloud cover, which hid the Moon almost completely. Small gaps in the clouds, shifting with the wind, can produce figures made of one or several glows, usually red when the Moon is low on the horizon. The Moon must have been skimming the cloud layer from above or below, since the witness saw the glows outside the cloud mass. The apparent approach and retreat has the same explanation: as the size or opacity of the gaps changes, the glow varies, and this is usually read as a change in distance of a light of constant brightness. Reached by telephone, the witness confirmed the exact position of the observation relative to the driveway and hedges, as well as the hedges' height at the time, and accepted these mechanisms of misidentification. The case, first classified D, was re-examined and classified A: moonrise.