Sighting in Saint-Jean-de-Liversay, July 8, 2020

Sometime between about 4:30 and 5:10 a.m., a witness noticed a bright point of light in the night sky and found it puzzling. They saw it several times, on and off, and estimated the total time at five minutes, adding up three separate phases. The object stayed in the same spot throughout. The witness photographed it with their mobile phone.

After going back indoors, they were struck by what the pictures showed and went out again one to two minutes later, but the object was gone. Only one account was collected.

GEIPAN rated the case as having low strangeness and good consistency: a single witness, but a fairly complete account backed by photographs. The description and the way the object looked in the images were typical of an astronomical misidentification, and its position matched that of the planet Venus. Only the sudden disappearance might seem odd, but the movement of the clouds at that moment explains it, as one of them hid Venus. The case was classified A: mistaken identification of Venus.