Sighting in Bonnes, September 30, 2015

Many people reported, at almost the same time, very bright luminous balls moving quickly across part of the sky one evening in late September. GEIPAN was informed the next day by the OVNI66 website, which gave about 11:50 pm as the time, although other elements in the file place the event at 10:53 pm. The phenomenon was seen from numerous places, from the Ardèche to the Pyrénées-Orientales, from the Corrèze to the Hérault, in Maine-et-Loire, in Toulouse and as far as Lyon. GEIPAN also received a detailed account directly from an observer near Poitiers. In Toulouse, many witnesses contacted a local newspaper, and a GEIPAN member glimpsed it out of the corner of their eye.

At 10:53 pm, GEIPAN's automatic "Allsky" camera, the cameras of the Pic du Midi observatory and those at Rochechouart, between Angoulême and Limoges, all recorded the event. A three-dimensional model built from these images made it possible to determine the trajectory precisely, at very high altitude, around 60 km. The phenomenon was the entry into the atmosphere of a meteoroid, fragments of which may have reached the ground. Its short duration implied an initial speed above 8 km/s, which points to a natural origin: a small mineral object probably coming from the asteroid belt. Space debris would have produced a longer event, and GEIPAN checked on calsky.com that no catalogued debris had fallen that day within sight of France. The case is classified A: observation of a bolide of natural origin.