Sighting in Panzoult, August 12, 2020

Sometime between 5 and 6 a.m., a witness standing in their garden noticed a point of light to the northeast, in a cloudy sky. They then went back indoors. When they came out again, they found a point of light in the southeast. Its path had seemed irregular to them. This was the only account collected for the event.

The investigation showed that, under a heavily overcast sky, the witness had seen two celestial bodies one after the other: the star Capella, then the planet Mars. A physiological effect, autokinesis (tiny involuntary movements of the eye), was also involved. Several points support this: both objects appear as points of light; the white-yellow colour matched Capella, while Mars looks more reddish; the brightness was strong, at first comparable to Venus and slightly lower for Mars; and the starting and ending azimuths and elevations fit the two bodies. The irregular movement was only apparent and came from autokinesis.

The witness could not tell that two different objects were involved, since their colour and brightness were so similar. They had stepped away briefly shortly after first seeing Capella, which the clouds then hid. On their return, Mars was visible in the southeast, clear of cloud at that moment. As these two bodies were probably the only ones visible in succession, the witness reasonably took them for one and the same phenomenon. GEIPAN classified the case as A.