Sighting in Tatinghem, September 2, 2007

A witness noticed a strange shape on a photograph. They had seen nothing directly in the sky when the picture was taken: the shape only showed up on the image. Cases like this, where a spot is found on a photo without any prior visual sighting, have become very common as digital cameras have spread.

According to the investigation, the largest spot was most likely a bird or an insect that passed fairly close to the camera, which accounts for its blurred look. The small grey spot at the centre was a slight flaw in the camera, probably visible on all of its photos. GEIPAN considered the case to be of very little strangeness and classified it B: probable passage of a bird or insect through the camera's field of view.