An account in A�rien, France

A person reports the following facts that they cannot explain: a passenger aboard a commercial airliner on May 21, 2011, the plane passes through a zone of turbulence while the sky is very blue with a cloud layer below. The witness then notices a large horizontal brown trail parallel to the plane and, below the level of the plane's wing, sees a white sphere the size of a one-cent coin held at arm's length. They then take photographs. The observation lasted about fifteen minutes between 7:55 PM and 8:10 PM. The gray trail is the shadow cast by the plane's contrail on the cloud layer; the shiny ball is an atmospheric optical phenomenon (similar to the Brocken specter): backscattering of light in the droplets of mist, toward the observer located in the direction of the sun. This explanation considers that the vibrations felt by the witnesses are independent of this phenomenon. The disappearance of the shiny ball is probably due to the interruption of the cloud layer.