A witness confuses Jupiter with an unidentified object

Summary

On the night of March 21, 2016, a witness in Saintes, in the Charente-Maritime region, observed a bright round object in the sky. The object appeared fixed to the south, to the left of the Moon, and remained visible for five hours. The witness described it as very luminous, with a brightness comparable to that of the Moon, although much smaller. After observing it with the naked eye and binoculars, the object disappeared completely around 4 a.m. There were no other testimonies of the same observation.

After a detailed analysis, the GEIPAN investigators concluded that the observed object was not an unexplained phenomenon, but the planet Jupiter. Its intense brightness and the absence of twinkling, distinctive features of a planet, led the witness to confuse it with an unidentified object. Additionally, the relative position of Jupiter with respect to the Moon and other stars, such as Alphard or Regulus, matched perfectly with the witness's description. For this reason, the case was classified as a misinterpretation of a common astronomical phenomenon.