Sighting in Reims, February 5, 1977

Between 9:00 and 9:30 pm, two witnesses noticed a luminous ball in the western sky that seemed to hang motionless. They heard no sound while watching it, and the phenomenon had vanished completely by about 9:45 pm.

Investigators considered the case thin: it rests on two witnesses whose accounts are brief, although the description of the object is fairly precise. The sincerity and credibility of the witnesses were never questioned. What they described (duration, shape, size, colour) matches a well-known celestial body, the planet Venus, which was indeed in the part of the sky they were looking at and was shining with remarkable brightness.

According to GEIPAN, the witnesses' eyesight was not the issue. What mattered was how they interpreted what they saw, influenced by how they felt (tiredness, observing at night). The case was originally rated "C" by GEPAN, but after re-examination it is now classed "A": low strangeness, a misidentification of Venus.