Sighting in Pantin (93) 30.05.1993 T2, May 30, 1993

Coming home after an evening out, the witness saw from their balcony, at about 4:15 a.m., an orange rectangular shape in the sky. Its apparent size was about 1 metre. It stayed still for around fifteen minutes, then moved slowly, changing direction, before drifting away and vanishing at the horizon. The witness saw a flashing red light and heard no noise.

At 4:30 a.m., still on the balcony, the witness noticed a second object, circular and white, not dazzling, also motionless and about 1 metre in apparent size. They watched it continuously until 6 a.m., when it disappeared very slowly.

The investigation separated two phenomena. The first was probably the landing lights of an aircraft on a night approach to one of the two Paris airports lying along the line of sight. Such lights can be seen from very far away, and when blended with the red anti-collision light they look like an orange rectangle. The eastward movement, the low elevation above the horizon, the flashing red light, the slow motion and the absence of sound all support this. The second was attributed to the planet Venus, which was rising in the east and moving slowly east-southeast while gaining height. It disappeared because of the many clouds that night. The witness was probably not used to watching the sky at that late hour and scanned it after the first sighting, which remains the main observation. Consistency is medium, helped by reference points on buildings, since the gendarmes had recorded no angular measurements. The case is classified A: observation of Venus.