PUYMOYEN (16) 27.08.2017

On 27 August 2017 around 22:30, two people outdoors in natural surroundings watched a starry sky and noticed lights apparently making jerky movements within a small area. Both supplied accounts. The investigation finds very little strangeness: - Staring intensely at a star can create apparent movement through the autokinetic effect. T1 said he began watching a star, and T2 said T1 was fixated on one. His references for motion—clouds or a supposedly motionless finger—were unreliable, especially with changing wind and irregular cloud movement. Angoulême weather station recorded a 90° wind-direction change between 22:00 and 23:00 (see Infoclimat). - A star with two fainter stars forming a triangle is ordinary in good conditions that reveal faint stars. Autokinetic effects need not be identical for stars of different brightness. - The observation lasted 40 minutes, with the UAP remaining northwest but descending by 15° from a high elevation. This fits stellar motion and rules out satellites in the investigation's assessment. T2 agreeing with T1 about movement does not objectively establish it. The autokinetic effect creates motion impressions whose direction and magnitude are hard to quantify and easily influenced by another person's perceptions. Refuting that explanation would require photographic recording or two independent, precise, timed records showing agreement. Even then, apparent motion from moving reference clouds would remain most likely given the method used. The investigation also asks whether T1's prior knowledge of a seemingly much stranger triangle report at the same location influenced his sense of strangeness. Evidential strength is moderate. The unusual jerks and triangular arrangement lack precise geometry, drawings, angular displacement or separation measurements, and a detailed sequence; only the overall 40-minute window is known. GEIPAN classifies the case A: observation of stars.