Sighting in Saint-Urcize, September 20, 2024

The witness was on holiday with their spouse and spending the night in a rented camper van parked on a basic rest area, surrounded by bare hills, near two streams and alongside a departmental road. At 10:23 pm, on stepping out of the vehicle, they noticed a bright point of light in the sky to the northwest. It seemed to twinkle and shifted from yellowish white to red. The spouse came out to look but went back inside quickly because of the cold and wind. The witness placed the light above a hill, below the clouds and fairly close to the horizon. With no precise landmark in the total darkness, they filmed it on a smartphone at 10:25 pm, without flash and using zoom, for 1 min 29 s. Four photos taken in burst mode at 10:26 pm show varying shapes of the light. The witness then went out again to record a second video lasting 1 min 35 s. In these images the light seemed to move.

GEIPAN considered the case well documented, as the photos and videos could be analysed. A Stellarium reconstruction puts Arcturus, a first-magnitude star, at about 287° azimuth and 9° elevation, whereas the witness estimated the light at around 280° azimuth and between 30° and 45° elevation. The azimuth gap is explained by the difficulty of finding one's bearings at night in an unfamiliar place, and overestimating elevation is common among witnesses. The strong twinkling fits a star low on the horizon in cold, windy conditions, and the long duration is typical of an astronomical object. The apparent movement in the videos comes from tiny hand tremors at high zoom, with no landscape reference. Some doubt remains about any movement seen with the naked eye, which may be due to small eye movements. The case was classified A: observation of the star Arcturus.