An open record of things people cannot explain

Meurthe-et-Moselle, France · 2013-06-06 · from the GEIPAN archive

An account in Meurthe-et-Moselle, France

On June 6, 2013 at 10:50 PM, several witnesses observed from their home the silent movement from south to northeast of a white luminous phenomenon in the sky. The object was then hidden by the landscape. The elements provided by the witness make it possible to demonstrate, with the support of Calsky data, that this was the passage of the International Space Station, visible that evening above the witness's city. The general trajectory (from south to northeast, peaking at 60 degrees) matches the Calsky data (see document). The brightness perceived by the witness as twice that of Venus also matches the calculated magnitude of -4.2 for the ISS under these conditions. The witness describes a non-linear movement of the luminous point: "like an earthworm": this is a common optical illusion when following a very bright point against a black background: the perception of the movement of a luminous point in the sky. However, a discrepancy of about 5 minutes is noted between the time given by the witness and the ISS bulletin. GEIPAN sent the witness the ISS passage forecasts for June 8 and 9, and the witness confirmed that it was indeed what he had seen. GEIPAN classifies this case as "A": observation of the International Space Station (ISS).

 

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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.