Sarthe, France · 2013-10-30 · from the GEIPAN archive
On October 30, 2013 at 11:38 PM, a witness observed three luminous objects flying at the same altitude in silence and at high speed. The objects disappeared above the rooftops. The observation of luminous points moving very quickly in a straight line for a few seconds suggests shooting stars or fireballs. This observation is notable for the fact that there are 3 objects moving in parallel. This could be a meteoroid that fragmented into 3 pieces during its reentry. The slight lateral movement of one of them could be a perception illusion called autokinesis (see The perception of the movement of a luminous point in the sky). The BOAM network (see: BOAM recorded many fireballs that night, including one precisely at 22:38 UTC, but they were observed to the East, from eastern France; so this is not the same event. This network has no camera near Sablé-sur-Sarthe (72). But the frequency of events that night only indicates a notable probability of observing fireballs. However, given the brevity of the observation, the fact that there is only one witness, and the fact that there are 3 objects, this fireball observation hypothesis is quite weak. GEIPAN classifies this case as "C" pending possible cross-checks.
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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.
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