Sighting in Montpellier, July 17, 2012

A witness was on their terrace at 4:03 a.m. when they noticed two very bright points in the sky toward the east-southeast. They filmed them and, on watching the video afterwards, found a third point. The three points then looked to them like a triangle. Two days later, they made the same observation again.

The GEIPAN noted that two fixed, very bright points pointed toward an astronomical origin. The sky chart for that morning shows Venus and Jupiter present at the same time, in the east/northeast direction. The witness's video matches the arrangement of these bodies in the sky. The third, fainter point was Aldebaran, a very bright star (magnitude -0.6). The GEIPAN therefore classified the case as A, fully identified: the witness had observed the planets Venus and Jupiter and the star Aldebaran.