On June 18, 2009, between 11:59 PM and 12:13 AM, an amateur astronomer photographs the star cluster M13. He is then surprised to notice on several of his photographs a point with a red streak that seems to indicate the movement of an object. The witness did not make a direct observation. He will send the original raw photos, but unfortunately these were lost following a computer failure. This astronomical observation case is uncommon. The movement observed over about fifteen minutes seems to rule out the usual satellites in low orbit with very fast relative motion. The satellite Amazons BrzTank (a large piece of debris probably) could be a good candidate; its brightness can vary if it is rotating, like most uncontrolled satellites. But its angular speed of 1.89'/s would make it move about 28° during the 15 minutes of the photo sequence, which is not the case, since it stays within the telescope's field of view. It could also be an asteroid passing near Earth; this last hypothesis seems unlikely, especially since the observed area is far from the ecliptic where most of these objects orbit. GEIPAN did not have the raw photos for this analysis. An optical or photographic artifact (internal or external stray reflections) can also be considered. GEIPAN classifies this case as C due to lack of information.
Bouches-du-Rh�ne, France · 2009-06-18 · from the GEIPAN archive
An account in Bouches-du-Rh�ne, France
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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.