Sighting in Nancy, May 21, 2010

Two witnesses saw a light in the sky toward the west-northwest on several evenings in a row. It stayed fixed and sank slowly toward the horizon. They took photographs of it.

According to the investigation, the case seems odd not because of the phenomenon itself but because of how the witnesses interpreted it, influenced by the line-like shape they saw and by a photograph taken from the foot of the building. The object in the sky had all the characteristics of the planet Venus. The photograph taken from the ground looks strange at first glance, but what the witness had actually photographed was a streetlamp. Once at ground level, Venus was hidden by the wooded hill, and only the light of the public lighting reached them, filtered through the foliage.

GEIPAN classified the case as A: repeated sightings of Venus, combined with a photographic mistake in which a streetlamp seen through foliage was taken for something else.