GEIPAN Case 2012-08-08284 — VOLX (04) 08.08.2012

Brief

On the night of 8 August 2012 at approximately 23:00, a single witness lying on a stone terrace in Volx (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) watched a brown-green, shuttle-shaped object with a dark-red central patch traverse the sky from north-northeast to south-southwest in about five seconds, making no sound and occluding background stars. GEIPAN dispatched a field investigator to the site in January 2015; reconstruction eliminated wind-borne objects (trajectory nearly perpendicular to prevailing wind), animals, all known motorized aircraft (no noise, no aeronautical database record), meteorological phenomena (Météo-France expert found nothing), and laser reflections. Physics modeling showed the object would have been supersonic at any altitude above roughly 460 m — yet no sonic boom was heard. The case was closed D1 with a consistency score of 0.75 and a strangeness score of 0.65.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

13 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

GEIPAN

Tags

weaver's shuttle shape, naked eye, Volx Alpes-de-Haute-Provence France, 2012, GEIPAN D1, silent, star-occluding, visual distortion wave, supersonic implied, single witness

Key points

• Single civilian witness actively scanning the starry sky from a terrace in Volx (04) at approximately 23:00 on 8 August 2012; no other witnesses present; report filed with GEIPAN by email on 21 August 2012, followed by a formal gendarmerie statement on 1 September 2012.p.1
• Object was brown-green with diffuse edges and a dark-red circular central patch; described as a 'weaver's shuttle' shape; very low luminosity; no navigation lights; visible only because it occluded background stars.p.2
• Duration approximately five seconds; witness immediately removed MP3 earphones to listen and perceived no sound; accompanying dogs showed no reaction during the passage.p.3
• Field reconstruction in January 2015 confirmed trajectory from NNE (10-15°) to SSW (190-195°) — nearly perpendicular to the prevailing westerly wind — definitively ruling out passive wind transport.p.3
• Witness described a 'visual distortion wave' effect on the star field as the object passed, comparing it to a visual deformation of the sky rather than any light-emitting effect.p.3
• Aeronautical database search found no registered aircraft, satellite, or other aerial vehicle at the relevant date, time, and location.p.7
• A Météo-France expert was consulted and found no meteorological explanation — including exceptional phenomena — compatible with the observation; METAR data confirmed clear sky (CAVOK), visibility over 10 km, light westerly wind at 13 knots.p.7
• Physics analysis showed that at 500 m altitude the object would have traveled at 1,330 km/h, exceeding Mach 1 and requiring a sonic boom that was never heard; at 1,000 m the implied object size is approximately 109 m, incompatible with any known manufactured craft.p.10
• GEIPAN's leading hypothesis was 'rare natural phenomenon' at 50% weight — analogized to oceanic rogue waves acting in the troposphere — while deliberate hoax indicators were absent and hallucination was rated at 5%.p.12
• Case closed D1 (unidentified phenomenon); consistency score 0.75, strangeness score 0.65 — a credible, detailed single-witness report of an object matching no known phenomenon.p.13

Verbatim

• L'observation a duré environ 5 secondes et le témoin estime la vitesse de ce PAN à environ 600 km/h. Aucun bruit en provenance de l'objet n'a été perçu.

  p.2

• De dire que le PAN a bien « occulté » les étoiles lors de son passage, tout en précisant qu'il y aurait eu une sorte déformation du ciel au passage du PAN (que le témoin compare à une onde de distorsion visuelle).

  p.3

• Ce qui correspond à une vitesse de 1,847 * (3600 / 5) = 1330 kms/h soit > déjà à Mach1 (pour mémoire : voisin de 340 m/s ou 1225 km/h), ce qui aurait pas manqué de provoquer une onde de choc sous forme de bang supersonique.

  p.10

• Le témoin pense avoir observé un « TYPE DE VEHICULE » sans n'en avoir aucune certitude

  p.9

• Libre à chacun d'élaborer des hypothèses mettant en jeu des technologies de propulsion à ce jour inconnues du public…

  p.12

• Nous pouvons conclure que le PAN observé par le témoin ne ressemble à aucun objet ou phénomène connu. Ce cas est à classer en « D1 » comme observation d'un phénomène non identifié.

  p.13

Most interesting

• The witness had practiced 'oscillating peripheral vision' techniques for sky observation for years — a method also foundational to EMDR trauma therapy — which GEIPAN cited as active evidence against an hallucination explanation.
• At arm's length the object subtended 7.5 cm against a 69 cm eye-to-hand distance (sighting coefficient 0.108), meaning the witness perceived it as roughly twice the apparent diameter of a full moon at the horizon.
• A major solar coronal mass ejection on 23 July 2012 — sixteen days before the sighting — was explicitly entered into the hypothesis table and rejected: too much elapsed time, and the object's appearance was wholly unlike a polar aurora.
• The witness's dogs, lying beside him on the terrace, showed no reaction whatsoever during the object's passage; they stirred only when the witness stood up abruptly to maintain visual contact.
• GEIPAN's altitude-speed-size matrix spans from 5 m to 10,000 m and demonstrates that no single altitude produces an outcome consistent with any catalogued conventional or natural object — the problem is over-constrained in every direction.
• The on-site field investigation did not occur until January 2015, roughly two and a half years after the observation, yet the investigator was able to conduct a double scene reconstruction that confirmed the original five-second duration estimate.