Sighting in Batilly, December 19, 2020

At around 10:15 in broad daylight, the witness was driving a van with three colleagues. They noticed a point in the sky that was brighter than a star and fairly large, and that seemed stationary. It stayed in front of them for several seconds, visible through the windscreen. The witness immediately drew the attention of the colleague in the passenger seat, who saw the same thing. Then, very suddenly, the point shrank until it was very small and vanished in about two seconds. The whole observation lasted around 10 seconds (the file also mentions about 8 seconds, according to the witness). No sound was heard. Only one witness account was collected.

The investigation concluded, with strong likelihood, that the witness saw a fireball appear and fade out in a clear daytime sky. The case was considered consistent, thanks to the details the witness gave in the questionnaire. The brevity of the sighting fits a fast, meteor-type aerial phenomenon, and no conventional aircraft matches an extremely bright object in daylight that disappears so quickly. Such a disappearance is typical of a bright daytime fireball burning out. It could have been a sporadic fireball, but more probably it came from the Geminids or the December Leo Minorids. GEIPAN classified the case as A.