Sighting in Nîmes, September 6, 2016

At around 8:45 p.m., from their terrace, the witness and a friend noticed a particularly conspicuous point of light in the sky. Intrigued, the witness filmed it for nine minutes, capturing much of the scene. The pair had already seen the same point the previous evening, in the same part of the sky, toward the west. They saw it again on two further occasions, at slightly different times: on 7 September around 8:30 p.m. and on 8 September around 8:15 p.m. Each observation took place in the evening, at sunset.

The investigation used the Stellarium planetarium software: for each of these days and times, it placed Venus in the part of the sky where the witnesses were looking. The recurrence of the phenomenon, its movement and a review of the video led to the conclusion that the witnesses had mistaken a celestial body, specifically the planet Venus, for something unusual. The video confirms that Venus was present and particularly bright on the evening of 6 September, owing to the clarity of the sky that night and to the magnitude of Venus. The residual strangeness is therefore low, and GEIPAN classified the case as A: repeated misidentifications of Venus.