Vosges, France · 2013-12-31 · from the GEIPAN archive
The witness, looking toward the north-northeast at 5:30 p.m., "observed from a moving vehicle an orange light above the horizon. The light seemed fixed; it was neither a star, nor the Moon, nor a streetlamp." Indeed, there is no very bright star in that direction, nor of course the Moon, and it is too high in the sky for a streetlamp. Since the observation took place shortly after sunset, one can consider the temporary reflection of the sun on an airplane or a satellite. The witness says the light seemed fixed, but since he was moving, this statement cannot be considered rigorous. GEIPAN did not find on "Flightradar24" any commercial airliner that could have caused this reflection, but nothing rules out a military aircraft. The Calsky sky chart gives several satellite candidates: the NOSS satellites that were passing in the witness's direction of observation at that time, in particular the launch debris: 3-4 Rocket. These objects, generally not very bright (magnitude 4 to 6), are known to sometimes "flash." These hypotheses, although suitable, could not be sufficiently consolidated for GEIPAN to adopt them. GEIPAN classifies this not-very-strange case in category "C": lack of information.
What stood out: an orange orb
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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.
Anomaly