An account in Gard, France

On December 30, 2015 at 7:50 a.m., a female driver at a roundabout observed for 30 seconds a large red luminous point descending very slowly from a very clear sky along a very gentle curved trajectory. The witness pulled over but did not have time to take out her phone to take a photo: the phenomenon had disappeared. No other testimony was collected. The witness was driving toward the northwest, shortly before sunrise in the southeast. A red point observed in the direction opposite the sun, still slightly below the horizon, could be the reflection of the sun on an object flying at high altitude, for example an airplane. A check on Flightradar indicates an airplane nearly 100 km from the witness in that northwest direction, and the airplane was in a slow descent. The very good atmospheric visibility, due to the north wind that was blowing lightly that day, makes this observation possible; see the Nîmes weather report on Météociel. GEIPAN classifies this case as B: probable observation of the sun's reflection on a high-altitude airplane. Given that the witness was traveling, the observation direction of the phenomenon is not precise enough to be certain of this explanation by that specific airplane. This remains a hypothesis, consistent with the observation report.