CHARTEVES (02) 20.05.2020

On 20 May 2020 at about 23:00 in Chartèves (02), T1 went into his garden. For more than half an hour he watched UAP1 ‘towards the west’ and UAP2 ‘towards the east’, each consisting of 5 white balls moving in different directions, with red points darting away from them. He called his wife, T2, and his son to see the phenomenon. The sky was clear and no sound was heard. He then went to bed. The principal initial unusual feature was the sight of 5 erratically moving balls in each of 2 different areas of sky (see the investigation report). GEIPAN rates evidential support as moderate, citing 2 witnesses, although the azimuths remain imprecise. GEIPAN considers the most probable explanation a misidentification of Arcturus and Vega, roughly in the directions T1 indicated. The long duration and the autokinetic effect, a visual illusion familiar to astronomers, support this. GEIPAN regards T1’s description as typical of that effect: a light stared at in darkness seems to move erratically. However, an astronomical misidentification combined with autokinesis does not explain the unusual red lights reported by T1, which T2 did not see. GEIPAN classifies the case B: probable misidentification of celestial objects.