Sighting in Ploeren, March 26, 2012

Around midnight, a witness standing on their terrace noticed a luminous object in the sky to the south, whose position seemed to keep changing. Puzzled, they called the gendarmerie. A patrol came to the scene and confirmed what the witness was describing. It then moved to another town, where the phenomenon was still visible.

Another gendarmerie unit, stationed at the semaphore station of the barre d'Étel, saw a twinkling point of light in the southwest, about 20° above the horizon, between 12:45 a.m. and 1:05 a.m. A final observation was made from the GERBAM at Gâvres. The phenomenon disappeared at 1:50 a.m., rising as it went.

GEIPAN noted that the case was complex, since the witnesses were in different places, and imprecise, as azimuths and elevations were lacking for each phase. The descriptions (color changes, sideways and back-and-forth movements) match those of very bright stars close to the horizon. It is hard to say for certain which star was seen: two or three may have been noticed in succession, Sirius, Procyon and Betelgeuse, with a veil of cloud that followed the afternoon's rain hiding them at times. No witness mentioned Sirius or any other star as a reference point, which would have made it possible to rule out this explanation. A patrolling aircraft and the radars detected nothing, which indicates a very distant phenomenon. GEIPAN classified the case B: probable observation of Sirius, followed by Procyon and/or Betelgeuse.