Sighting in Prades-le-Lez, June 14, 2017

At around five in the morning, a witness noticed a very bright, motionless phenomenon in the sky. They described it as a white shape with two lobes and a red dot at its centre, and said that apart from the Moon, no star was shining. They watched for about five minutes, then stopped without waiting to see how it ended, and did not take a photo. Only one account was collected, and it was very imprecise and given six months after the event.

The investigation concluded that the description most likely matched Venus. In June, between five and six in the morning, Venus is the only star-like object visible in a still-dark sky. It was in the east; the witness had mentioned the south-east, though without conviction. They did, however, place the Moon to the right of Venus along a vertical line at 45°, which agrees with the actual positions. It is also common for Venus to look like a diffuse glow rather than a point, with red lobes and several colours, an effect of the atmosphere on the light rays.

The hypothesis could not be firmly confirmed because the account was so vague. The delay before reporting, the decision to stop watching after five minutes and the lack of a photo suggest the witness felt only a weak sense of strangeness at the time. GEIPAN therefore classified the case as B: probably Venus.