BOURG-LES-VALENCE (26) 06.08.2016

On 6 August 2016 around 21:00, a driver and her female passenger reported two stationary luminous phenomena in the sky. The driver stopped and took two photographs with a camera. Only one account was collected. The two reported UAPs were a stationary luminous trail in IMG_0044 and a black spot to the right of an aircraft contrail in IMG_0045. The spot was not seen directly and appeared only in the photograph; it was very probably a nearby insect. The visual description and photograph of UAP 1 are characteristic of a contrail. FlightRadar clearly identified an aircraft due west at sunset, the typical geometry for a brightly illuminated trail. The unusual claim was that the UAP remained stationary for 11 minutes. The source argues that an aircraft should change its angular position by at least 70–90° in that period. A telephone interview clarified a different sequence from the written account. The witness saw UAP 1 while driving, stopped and took IMG_0044, then IMG_0045. She searched for UAP 1 in the viewfinder for the second image, but that image was highly zoomed and aimed elsewhere. She remembered her friend saying it had disappeared. They then kept looking without seeing it again; the entire sequence lasted 11 minutes by the clock. Actual observation was therefore much shorter: perhaps 2–3 minutes, allowing time to stop after about 400 m and pick up the readily available camera, which she had just been using. At the first photograph, the identified aircraft was about 8–9° high and 70 km away. Three minutes earlier it was about 4–5° high and 115 km away. This small angular change could look stationary, particularly during intermittent observation. Disappearance is explained by the aircraft/contrail entering darkness as direct illumination from the setting Sun ended. GEIPAN classifies the case A: aircraft contrail. It presents the account as an example of imprecision or exaggeration—'stationary for 11 minutes' and 'we observed these two phenomena for exactly 11 minutes'—that may unknowingly affect reports, especially amid emotion or excitement, here described as a racing heartbeat and excitement.