Pilot witness in France, France

On March 15, 2015 at around 8:45 PM, many people were able to observe the passage in the sky of a colored luminous phenomenon. GEIPAN received several testimonies, including one from a pilot. This phenomenon, observed by hundreds of people in the northeast of France and especially in Germany and Switzerland, is clearly a bolide. A BOLIDE is a phenomenon corresponding to the entry into the atmosphere of a "large" object (more than 100 g, and from a few centimeters to 1 meter in diameter). This produces a large trail of light capable of illuminating the landscape for several seconds. This bolide was also recorded by several cameras (see among others BOAM), which makes it possible to perfectly characterize its trajectory, and therefore, its natural origin: it is a meteoroid, a small rocky body that crossed Earth's orbit. The size of this body at entry is very difficult to determine, between 100 g and 10 kg. This bolide had the particularity of being observable for almost 10 seconds due to its relatively grazing trajectory. The trajectory of the bolide went from the north northeast to the south southeast, approximately vertical over Stuttgart to Zurich. GEIPAN received 5 testimonies from witnesses on the ground, and two testimonies from pilots in flight (see table and geographic maps). It will be noted that one of the pilots, flying north, says that the phenomenon "grazed" the aircraft, while it was more than 200 km away. This illusion of proximity is a constant in all bolide testimonies, it does not spare pilots; moreover, at high altitude, the atmospheric haze is nonexistent, making it all the more impossible to estimate the distance of a powerful unknown luminous phenomenon. An excellent analysis of all the observations of this event, compiled by the American Meteor Association, is available at: U-Sphere. GEIPAN classifies this case 'A': phenomenon perfectly identified as a bolide, caused by the fall of a natural meteoroid.