Sighting in Castres, September 20, 2015

On a Sunday, between about 8:00 and 8:15 pm, a witness was on their terrace under a clear sky. They saw an object fall vertically at great speed until it vanished into the landscape. The witness thought an aircraft was crashing at supersonic speed. A few seconds later, an object shot back up toward the zenith. Part of it seemed to break away and come back down horizontally. The witness believed both sightings involved one and the same object. The orange or grey phenomena made no sound.

The investigation retained one plausible hypothesis: a mix-up with aircraft condensation trails lit by the setting sun. It could not confirm this, however. The inquiry lacked precise angular data, the azimuths of appearance and disappearance for each phase, complete information on whether contrails were present, the duration of each phase, and details on the nature and extent of the movements the witness described as forming an "obtuse angle". GEIPAN therefore classified the case as C: the phenomenon remains unidentifiable as it stands, as there was not enough information to reach a firm conclusion.