Sighting in Rustrel, March 14, 2020

At 10:34 pm, the witness was watching television, sitting on the sofa. From there, they noticed a very bright point of light in the sky. It was round and orange in colour. After watching it for a long while, the witness decided to film it with their mobile phone. They then got up to wake their daughter and came back with her, but the phenomenon was no longer visible. The initial observation had lasted seven minutes in total.

The video is 27 seconds long. Its quality is poor because of the device, but it proved useful for the investigation. Going through it frame by frame, investigators noted variations in light intensity, which they attribute to the transparency of the air and the heavy zoom, and no visible movement that would have suggested anything other than an astronomical misidentification. The witness had also seen the same light several times in the same place, shifted to the right of its earlier position depending on the time.

The telephone interview removed any ambiguity and allowed an azimuth error to be corrected, which the witness confirmed. GEIPAN concluded that the witness had mistaken the star Sirius for an unusual object and classified the case as A, since no strong element of strangeness remained after analysis.