Indre-et-Loire, France · 2014-07-30 · from the GEIPAN archive
The witness, sitting in his garden around 11:15 PM, observes a very intense white light, oval in shape, surrounded by a bluish halo, moving, without blinking, at the speed of an airplane. The object gains altitude then disappears. Other points of light are seen. The observation, lasting a few seconds, of a very intense white light moving at the (angular) speed of an airplane suggests the observation of a satellite during part of its trajectory. The Calsky report (see attached) mentions at that time the overflight of many satellites, more or less visible (see the "magnitude" indicator, which is smaller the higher the brightness) and indicates precisely at 11:16 PM a fairly rare phenomenon for a given location: an "Iridium Flare": a temporary reflection of the sun on a highly reflective part of the satellite. It is likely that this is the phenomenon the witnesses observed (the questionnaire leaves an ambiguity about the position of the phenomenon in the sky). Since this reflection of the sun gradually decreases as the satellite progresses along its orbit, and changes its attitude relative to the sun, observers often interpret this drop in brightness as a moving away, which was the case here. The second part of the observation may correspond to the observation of the two NOSS 3 satellites (4A and 4C) flying in formation, with a magnitude of around 4, that is, like stars barely visible to the naked eye. Their apparent trajectory seen from the ground is a great circle. GEIPAN classifies this case "A": observation of satellites.
What stood out: moving in formation
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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