Sighting in Suippes, May 16, 1982

At about 3:45 a.m., a driver and their passenger, two witnesses in all, noticed an orange, half-moon-shaped mass of light in the sky. It first stayed motionless over the town. It then seemed to follow the car, moving in horizontal jumps, as far as the neighbouring village. No sound was heard during the sighting. On reaching that village, the two witnesses lost sight of it, as the landscape or buildings hid it. The gendarmerie gathered no further information about the phenomenon.

The GEPAN had classified the case D in 1982, and a new investigation later reviewed it. This found that the duration, shape, apparent size and colour matched those of the Moon at moonrise, and the Moon was indeed in the part of the sky where the object was seen. The witnesses did not mention it, except to say they had first thought of the Moon, which indicates that the object resembled it. According to the GEIPAN, the problem was not what the witnesses saw but how they interpreted it, influenced by tiredness and worry. The case, of low strangeness, is now classified A: a misidentification of the Moon.