@goonerash13 said:
The sun was high in up in the sky in the opposite direction covered by clouds.
The Sun would have only been around 51 degrees altitude as seen from Paris at the time of filming, which doesn't seem that high.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/france/paris?iso=19990811
At 0:19 of the clip we see a light above the trees. Maybe it would be possible to figure out the apparent altitude of that light?
I agree with Landru that it looks like the partially eclipsed disk of the Sun.
Screenshot from 0:19:
And the same light zoomed in from 0:29:
At 0:43 there is a brief glimpse of a smaller light below and to the left of the first light (in the gap between the stand of trees the first light is above).
If the first light is the Sun, the second could possibly be Venus. Stellarium shows it in a similar orientation.
Looking into the eclipse a bit, there may have been a perception among some people that UFOs were going to cause, or had caused strange events during the eclipse.
The French
COMETA report claiming UFOs are probably ET ships had been published very recently before the eclipse and was receiving some French media coverage at that time. Here is an archived article originally published August 5th, 1999, covering it:
https://web.archive.org/web/2024022...mations/ovnis-un-rapport-delirant_634524.html The COMETA report is not directly related to the eclipse but the timing and press coverage may have influenced public perception.
An article in the Guardian originally published the day after the eclipse discusses odd "banding" in the sky observed during the eclipse as likely caused by shadows from condensation trails, relevant here because they note "Eclipse experts had for days been promising strange atmospheric effects." It also notes that "flashing lights" seen during the event "weren't UFOs. It was the Perseid meteor shower."
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/aug/13/eclipse.uknews1
In an AP interview with a French eclipse watcher (and Serj Tankian doppelganger) during the event, he says "I'm glad it is happening because I am not a scientist, so everybody is telling, so I don't know if it is going to come as well but I am happy because it has come but we are waiting for a flying saucer, someone was talking about that so we are still waiting for the UFO"
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Dm1r5XRMc&t=133s (timestamp 2:13)
So a UFO report was in the news, eclipse experts were predicting strange atmospheric effects, and at least one person at a watching event was reporting rumors of UFOs. I wonder if @goonerash13 was aware of any of this at the time they were filming the event, how long after filming they determined the video showed something strange, and if their interpretation of the video and memory of the event might have been influenced by any of the above.
