A triangle shape in France, France

On November 11, 1980 at around 6:30 PM, about a hundred people across the whole of southeastern France and in Corsica observed the passage of a powerful luminous phenomenon in the sky. Many testimonies were recorded by the gendarmerie. Hundreds of witnesses in Italy (see the table of Italian cases) and in Spain (Catalonia) also reported this extremely spectacular phenomenon. The press also reported the phenomenon (see the articles in Nice Matin). Upon receiving a new testimony of an observation made that day (see BONNIEUX (84)), GEIPAN re-examined this case in order to publish it. A single table brings together the essential elements of the multiple observations (see the investigation report and the table of French testimonies). The multiple witnesses describe a very powerful luminous phenomenon that crossed the sky in less than a minute (for most of them), heading south or southwest. One can note a great variability in the elements described, both in the color of the phenomenon (green, red, yellow, purple, white, pinkish, bluish) and in the shape (ball, cigar, saucer, triangle, and even parallelepiped), the estimated distance (30 m to 2 km), the direction of travel (mostly north to south, or east to west, or the reverse for some witnesses), and the duration of observation (mostly less than 1 minute, a few cases of more than 2 minutes). Experience shows that such variability is frequent for all mass observations; one must also take into account the fact that all the witnesses, far apart from each other, did not see the phenomenon from the same angle, nor over the same duration: this leads to a variability that is entirely explainable in the witnesses' accounts (see the investigation report). Nevertheless, the simultaneity of the phenomenon, and a few common characteristics such as fragmentation into 3 elements, leave little doubt about the single origin of the phenomenon. In this kind of case, it is the multiplicity of witnesses at the same moment and their significant geographic separation that proves the phenomenon was very powerful and at high altitude: the atmospheric reentry hypothesis becomes certain. The nature of the reentering object is harder to prove: in this case, due to the southwest orientation of the phenomenon, and its duration of less than one minute, which implies an initial speed clearly greater than 10 km/s, the hypothesis of the atmospheric reentry of a satellite debris gives way to the hypothesis of the reentry of a natural meteoroid. The astronomers of Nice (see the article "The glow in the azure sky: it was indeed a meteorite") and of Genoa confirmed this hypothesis. GEIPAN classifies this case as A: observation of the atmospheric reentry of a bolide, caused by a natural meteoroid.