Sighting in Sellières, May 8, 1979

At around 4:40 a.m., a woman driving a car noticed a luminous phenomenon that puzzled her. She described a reddish-orange ball with what she called "corkscrew antennas". The object moved, then quickly vanished toward the southwest.

The gendarmes had ruled out the Moon. They had repeated the check the next day at the same time, and the Moon then appeared further to the left of the vehicle than the object the witness had seen. A precise analysis of the sky, carried out afterwards, showed the opposite. On the day of the sighting, the Moon was in fact in the direction the witness had been looking, and it was setting at that very time. The witness had therefore seen a fairly bright moonset. Clouds probably produced reflections or glare around it. The apparent quick disappearance is easily explained by the fact that the witness was driving. The check made the following day proved nothing, because the Moon was then further west and higher above the horizon, making it unmistakable. GEIPAN classified the case as A: an observation of a moonset.