(DPT) PYRENNES-ATLANTIQUES (64) 29.04.1983

GEIPAN continues to publish all its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Its publications include older cases classified at the time as A, B, C or D that are now being re-examined solely to improve the accuracy of their conclusions. New technical tools (software) and the investigative experience gained over the years sometimes lead to new observations or even a change in classification. This observation case, formerly classified D and named NAY-BOURDETTES (64) 1983, is among the cases recently re-examined. On 29 April 1983 at about 23:55, a couple driving in a car observed a bright-orange luminous phenomenon from several places. It appeared square and then round. They were frightened because the UAP seemed close and appeared to follow their movements. They took refuge at the home of a third person, who noticed nothing unusual outside. GEIPAN finds that the accounts in the gendarmerie report have the characteristics of an astronomical observation (see reconstruction). Its accumulated experience of explained cases, particularly over the preceding decade, makes these characteristics familiar; see its website searches for celestial objects, Venus, the Moon and the Sun. - The observation lasted more than 30 minutes and the phenomenon was low in the sky. - The UAP remained stationary when the witnesses stopped and appeared to move when they moved, giving an impression of being followed: the “following ball” illusion. GEIPAN explains that the celestial object’s direction remains fixed. When a car maintains an approximately constant heading, it stays in the same direction relative to the vehicle while the landscape passes. Already surprised by its appearance and interpreting it as nearby, the witness perceives it as moving above the houses parallel to the car at its speed, here 40 km/h. Disappearance behind obstacles and reappearance at the end of a street can seem deliberate, as though waiting: “There I saw it above the CANCE premises. It was stationary in the air and seemed to be waiting for us. Frightened…” - Apparent motion toward and away from the witnesses also follows from interpreting the celestial object as nearby and moving. Changes in brightness are then read as changes in distance of an object whose intrinsic brightness is assumed constant. “We stopped again, and when we saw this phenomenon coming toward us, we reversed to escape.” GEIPAN identifies the object as the Moon. At 00:20 it lay at azimuth 128° and elevation 6°, above the CANCE buildings facing the road as the witness drove along Chemin La Monjoie out of Nay. The witness said, “This time we took Chemin Lamonjoie to try to get back to the parents’ home. There I saw it above the CANCE premises. It was stationary in the air and seemed to be waiting for us. Frightened…” Failure to recognize the Moon was the starting point for the other misinterpretations, including following and approaching/receding. The Moon was nearly full, phase 0.92, and rising with the reddish colour reported for the UAP, but did not appear in its familiar round or crescent shape. GEIPAN describes a common mechanism: thin cloud reveals the Moon only through gaps of changing, arbitrary shape. Here the initial shape was square, described as a “suitcase” or “window”; it later became round, after the misidentification had begun. Weather records from Lourdes-Ossun, 30 km away, show cloud cover that night (Infoclimat). The gendarmerie report also mentions a resident calling about a glow behind a cloud near Nay at about 23:00 that night. At least this establishes that the cloud screen was incomplete and could let moonlight through. GEIPAN classifies the case A: observations of the reddish Moon.