An account in Ardennes, France

On April 25, 2008 at around 8:30 PM, a witness and his wife are intrigued by the passage of a light source identical to a lighthouse beam over the hill facing their terrace. The observation made by the witnesses may have several origins: - The head-on view of an airplane. The plane's powerful landing light, seen in this case at about 10 km, blinds the observer and does not allow the plane to be seen. The plane, descending, then disappears behind the hill and turns toward the West, and the beam of its light then disappears for the observer. The airport's low traffic, especially at that hour, may explain the observers' surprise. - A flash from an Iridium satellite could have produced the same effect of a bright point disappearing behind the hill. This not-very-strange case is classified "C" due to lack of information to validate one of the two hypotheses.

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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.