An open record of things people cannot explain

Pyr�n�es-Orientales, France · 2004-05-14 · from the GEIPAN archive

An account in Pyr�n�es-Orientales, France

On May 14, 2004 at 9:44 PM, a witness, an amateur astronomer, observed for a few minutes in the sky the slow SW-NE passage of a very bright point. The PAN makes a second pass on a different trajectory but still toward the NE at 11:30 PM. An amateur astronomer, the witness is intrigued by this phenomenon that he cannot explain. No other testimony will be collected by the gendarmerie and this case, formerly named CERET (60), will be classified as C by the SEPRA. Thanks to new technical means (software) and to the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, a re-examination of this case was able to be carried out (see the document "Investigation Notes"). The described phenomenon presents many common characteristics (observation duration, shape, size, color, movement...) with a well-known astronautic object: the International Space Station or ISS, which was indeed present on the indicated trajectory as well as at the times provided by the witness. It is not the witness's visual perception that is in question, but the interpretation that the witness makes of his observation, and this because of a preconceived idea, thinking that satellites could not be visible at the time of his observation. In the current GEIPAN classification, this case of low strangeness is classified as PAN A, observation of ISS passes.

 

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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.