FOUSSAIS-PAYRE (85) 02.12.2024

The secondary witness, T2, was leaving home when a stationary light in the sky first appeared to be a star. Shortly afterwards, T2's spouse, the main witness T1, arrived and independently observed it. T1 fetched a smartphone and took several photographs and videos while T2 stopped watching. T1 described an oval blue light making rapid, varied, non-straight movements. The phenomenon reportedly remained visible for at least 8 minutes before suddenly rising and vanishing at very high speed into the sky. GEIPAN judged the evidential support very good: 2 witnesses were present, although only T1 completed a questionnaire, and the photographs and videos could be analysed. It defines evidential support as the amount of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively established. The perceived strangeness came mainly from the appearance and motion in those images. The hypothesis investigated was Venus. Sharp video sections without zoom showed a single stationary white point at Venus's position. GEIPAN noted that no additional nearby light appeared, although Venus should have been separately visible if the UAP were something else. The apparent movements, oval shape and blue colour appeared only in zoomed portions. It attributed the erratic video motion and oval smearing in photographs to movement of the handheld phone, and the blue tint to a night-mode optical artefact. GEIPAN considered that T1's description of the UAP's appearance and behaviour had been formed from images containing these artefacts. The account of a sudden upward departure reinforced that interpretation: analysis showed fixed ground features moving across the video frame, indicating camera movement. It classified the case A: Venus.