Isère, France · 2017-09-10 · from the GEIPAN archive
On September 10, 2017 between 9:45 PM and 10:00 PM, the witness, who is taking care of her child, has her attention drawn by the rapid passage of a bright light. The object is described as having a round shape, on fire, yellow-orange in color, falling silently. The witness quickly moves to the window but the light has disappeared. Thinking that the object may have fallen in the immediate vicinity of the home, the witness searches the next morning but these are unsuccessful. The witness reports the passage, lasting 1 to 2 seconds, of a fairly dazzling light that she observes from her window with the impression that this round shape is on fire. This description matches the numerous testimonies (at least 25) reporting the passage of a fireball (re-entry into the atmosphere of a meteoroid) on September 10 at 7:29 PM UT (i.e., 9:29 PM, local French time) visible from Meurthe-et-Moselle to Bouches-du-Rhône, passing through Pyrénées-Orientales, Isère, and Switzerland. It also seems that the meteoroid fragmented into multiple pieces at the very end of its luminous trajectory (more detail on the site link: REFORME. This fireball was also detected by 14 cameras of the FRIPON network. The time indicated by the witness does not quite match the passage of the fireball, but the time indication provided is not very precise since the witness places her observation between 9:45 PM and 10:00 PM, stating that her radio alarm clock has the correct time, but she did not necessarily look at her clock right at the moment of the observation, which could explain the discrepancy with the fireball testimonies. The altitude estimate (4 meters in height) is made intuitively. Since the phenomenon is very bright, the witness interpreted it as very close, but without any objective reference. Fireball phenomena, often perceived as very close by witnesses, actually occur at an altitude of 100 to 50 km, and are therefore visible from the ground over an area of about 200 km in diameter. Despite the discrepancy with the time slot given by the witness, the appearance and trajectory described leave little doubt about the correspondence with this fireball widely observed elsewhere. GEIPAN classifies this case "A": very probable observation of a fireball.
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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