TEMARA (MA.01) 20.11.1954

On 20 November 1954, between 00:30 and 03:30, several people reportedly saw a luminous phenomenon in the sky at Temara. Only one account was collected. That witness described a UAP making vertical zigzag movements from the south-southeast in a cloudless sky, alternately bright and dark and surrounded by a halo. GEIPAN considered an astronomical explanation for this prolonged observation of a large point of light. Sirius was in the southeast at 00:30 and subsequently moved southward. Desert dust in the atmosphere could have produced the halo. The reported zigzags could have resulted from the autokinetic illusion, in which a light viewed in darkness appears to move. The observation direction was too imprecise to confirm this explanation: the azimuth was estimated only roughly as south-southeast, no change of direction over time was recorded, and elevation was expressed in metres rather than degrees. GEIPAN classified the case C because the position in the sky was insufficiently documented.