AVESNES-LES-AUBERT (59) 01.02.2025

On 1 February 2025 at 20:28, a witness stopped on a small country road near Avesnes-les-Aubert (59) took a smartphone time-lapse sequence to photograph the Moon and Venus. The sequence lasted about 4 minutes. He sent GEIPAN an extracted image and the complete file through a download link on 11 February 2025, with a completed technical questionnaire. The feature he later noticed was described as a “green crescent.” He did not see the UAP directly, only afterwards while viewing the images. He first considered a digital-image artefact, then noted that its movement resembled “the movement of a satellite.” An astronomical check for Lille using Stellarium, free software that displays a photorealistic sky in real time, confirmed that the Moon and Venus were visible at the time (Appendix 1). GEIPAN assesses the evidential strength as good despite there being only 1 account. Analysis of the short video and photograph leads it initially to describe the phenomenon as probably an unwanted reflection of the Moon in the smartphone lens. The hypothesis rests on the following: - GEIPAN’s IPACO image-analysis software includes a reflection-detection tool. The analysis unambiguously identifies a reflection caused by the Moon in the video and photograph. The source calls it the “full Moon” here, although it later specifies a crescent illuminated by 13.2%. The reflection consistently lies opposite an intense light source, with point symmetry through the lens’s optical centre. The method is described on the IPACO website’s optical-reflections page. - The image’s geometric centre and the lens’s optical centre differ slightly. This can be attributed to a small offset between the image sensor and smartphone optical system. IPACO’s dedicated tool clearly identified and measured the difference (Appendices 2 and 3). - The video shows the Moon and its reflection—the reported UAP—moving simultaneously in this point-symmetric relationship. Venus also produces its own, less visible reflection. The measured distance between the Moon and Venus and that between their reflections are identical: 436 pixels (Appendix 4). - The reflection is crescent-shaped, like the Moon when photographed, when it was 13.2% illuminated. Its reversed orientation agrees with point symmetry about the optical axis. - Blue, green or red colouring is typical of the protective coating on the lens’s outer element. The investigators do not know whether the coating on this particular phone model was green. The phenomenon could not be seen with the naked eye, only on the device’s screen while imaging or afterwards when inspecting images on a computer. The witness confirmed that he noticed it only after viewing the photographs. GEIPAN classifies the observation A: an unwanted lens-reflection artefact in the imaging device. Under GEIPAN’s criteria, evidential strength is the quantity of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively supported. IPACO is GEIPAN’s image-analysis and processing software (IPACO.fr).