Gard, France · 2016-08-12 · from the GEIPAN archive
White light in Gard, France
On August 12, 2016 at around 10:30 PM, a witness is looking at the stars and is intrigued by the passage of a bright white light that seems to zigzag slightly. The witness calls their partner, who makes the same observation. The phenomenon crosses the sky from West to East and then disappears. The witness saw the International Space Station (ISS). Their indications in the sky match the ISS trajectory well, except for the disappearance, which was lower in elevation than indicated, unless a cloud ended the observation. The end of the ISS's visibility (the end of its illumination by the sun) can seem strange, due to its rapidity, or on the contrary here due to its slowness ("a candle wick going out in 2 or 3 seconds"). The impressions of oscillations around the trajectory, which also give a sense of strangeness because a satellite's trajectory is regular, are well-known phenomena of autokinetic perception. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as A: observation of the passage of the ISS.
Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classif…
On October 24, 2012 at 7:50 PM, a female driver's attention was drawn by the rapid passage of a luminous phenomenon in the sky. The witness describes a bright white light that, on a descendi…
On February 23, 1981, a witness leaving their home saw two large glowing balls in the sky. For a few seconds, they emitted a very intense and blinding light. Very surprised by the phenomenon…
In the night of April 10 to 11, 1997, a witness is awakened by a very bright white glow followed by a firework-like noise. Going to the window, he sees that the roof of his car, parked in th…
On July 13, 2016 at around 11:30 PM, a witness observes for 30 seconds a very bright white light stationary in the southwest of the clear night sky. Only one testimony is collected.
The witn…
Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience gained over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classific…
At 7:35 a.m. on January 30, 2012, a witness observes what he first takes to be a star. The object is spherical, the size of a 5-centime coin, white in color, bluish at the center. Suddenly, …
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On August 5, 2015 at 11:10 PM, a witness is intrigued by a brilliant intense white point moving across the sky before disappearing.
This testimony of observing a very bright point crossing p…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On May 24, 2017, after an evening spent with a group of astronomers observing Jupiter, two witnesses are intrigued by the particular SSE-ENE movement of a very bright point in the sky that m…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
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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