MOUREUILLE (63) 12.02.2018

On Monday, 12 February 2018, not 18 February as stated in the gendarmerie report, witness T1 went outside at about 19:00 and saw a stationary, circular, multicolored light. He fetched binoculars. After 15 minutes, he called his son T2, who was cycling 1 km away and had just seen 2 bright “white balls” disappear. T2 joined his father in Moureuille (63), and they intermittently watched very slowly moving lights with changing colors until 23:00. They gave gendarmerie statements in February 2018, and T1 drew his binocular view. An investigator visited on 15 November 2018 and obtained further information (see investigation report). The appearance, near-stationarity, duration and agreement with known star positions suggested stars. The witnesses watched intermittently within small fields of view. An initial puzzling star, UAP 1, led them to examine a second field, UAP 2, then repeatedly return to both. Different visible stars, magnitude below 3, lay within 10° of their indicated directions and could repeatedly be misidentified. GEIPAN notes that an initial strange impression can heighten attention, draw in another witness who might otherwise notice nothing, and make later observations seem strange through a mistaken association. The principal remaining puzzle was why Deneb would cause T1's initial concern, since it is not a frequent source of such mistakes, unless atmospheric conditions particularly enhanced multicolored effects. Binocular condensation could then have added an iridescent appearance around the enlarged light. These explanations were plausible in kind, but whether the effects were strong enough to trigger the reported strangeness was uncertain. Ultimately, substantiation was borderline for confirming probable misidentification of several stars, despite the many plausible matches. Under GEIPAN's method, the assessment lay at C, unidentified for insufficient reliable information, close to B, probably identified as stars, particularly given the 2 observers. GEIPAN retained Category C.