Sighting in Varès, February 9, 2015

A witness noticed what looked to them like a strange star in the sky. It stayed motionless and seemed to shift between red, green and blue. The observation took place between 20:00 and 23:00, and the witness said the object remained fixed for about an hour. They pointed to two possible directions, corresponding to azimuths of roughly 165° and 142°.

The investigation compared this description with a sky chart. At an azimuth of 143° and an elevation of 21° lay Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. The color changes and the vertical or horizontal oscillations the witness described match the effects of atmospheric scintillation, together with a perceptual illusion known as the autokinetic effect. The long duration of the sighting and the star-like look of a fixed object also pointed to a distant astronomical phenomenon. GEIPAN therefore classified the case as A: the object was the star Sirius.