An account in France, France

On February 21, 1978, between 8:45 PM and 9:00 PM, many witnesses located in different French departments observed for a few seconds the rapid movement across the sky of lights of various colors. Most witnesses described an object of rather spherical shape, the size of a football, followed by a long luminous trail of green then red-orange color. Many witnesses indicated a movement toward the West and a disappearance at the horizon or instantaneous. 78 witness accounts were reported. The summary table of locations and observation times (attached in the investigation elements) is striking for its geographic extent and the correspondence in time. This favors a single phenomenon produced at high altitude (> 50 km) and giving visibility over a large area. This is a key characteristic of the well-known phenomenon of the atmospheric reentry of a meteoroid. This is reinforced by another key characteristic, which is the elongated glow and the short duration. A longer duration could also have led to considering the related hypothesis of the atmospheric reentry of a spacecraft. Nowadays, many sites record data collected on the ground (most often by automatic cameras) during such reentries, so that witness reports to GEIPAN are resolved without any special investigation. The 2016 example with more than 20 recordings (attached in the IMO analysis supplement) illustrates the analogy with this old case of February 21, 1978 at 9:00 PM. In the analysis supplement, there is a selection of witness descriptions that clearly conveys the impression of rapid movement with a conical or elongated shape. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as A: observations of a meteoroid reentry.