CONQUET (LE) (29) 22.05.2016

On 22 May 2016 around 23:00, T1 was at home in Le Conquet (29) when his wife T2 drew his attention to a 'star that seems to move slightly'. Using a camera with a telephoto lens, he took two photographs before it was hidden by the gable of the neighboring house. To the naked eye it was a slowly moving, pale white-yellow point. In the photographs it had a cylindrical, erratic appearance. Later, examining them on his computer, T1 noticed four other similar but fainter shapes. The case has good evidential strength*, despite only one witness reporting to GEIPAN, because the two photographs could be analyzed. *Under GEIPAN's criteria, evidential strength is the amount of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively substantiated. The investigation confirmed Mars as the main UAP and stars as the other four: - The naked-eye point-like appearance fits Mars. The erratic cylindrical shapes in the photographs are artifacts from camera movement during the 0.625-second exposure. The source says its very pale yellow color distinguishes it from a star. The reported zigzag path was merely T1's inference from the main UAP's photographed shape, caused by camera shake. - Another UAP's changing red/green color matches a star twinkling very low above the horizon. The sky-chart tool in GEIPAN's IPACO image-analysis software overlaid a photograph with the sky and found a very good positional match with Mars and stars in Scorpius (appendices 1–3): - Dschubba, Delta Scorpii, is the lowest point, twinkling red and green. - Acrab, Beta Scorpii, is the point at upper left. - Jabhat Acrabi I and II, Omega Scorpii, forming an optical double, are the two faintest points below Acrab. Image analysis showed azimuth estimates more than 45° away from Mars, probably because T1 became disoriented at night. Elevation was also overestimated: T1 gave 45°, whereas Mars was actually below 8°. The investigation attributes this overestimate to the misleading effect of strong telephoto magnification. Mars was visible at the observation and photograph times. The source describes the very slow movement as characteristic of the planet's actual drift accentuated by Earth's rotation. GEIPAN classifies the case A: Mars for the main UAP and stars for the others.