Sighting in Châtillon, July 17, 2022

During the night of 16 to 17 July 2022, a witness who was watching the sky from home with their child noticed a luminous sphere moving at very high altitude above La Défense. The object was very bright and looked disproportionately large for such an altitude, yet it did not flicker. It crossed the sky quickly and soon disappeared from view. The witness filmed it with a hand-held phone. Only one witness account was collected.

The investigation established that the ISS (International Space Station) was crossing the sky at the stated time, on a path and at an angular height very consistent with the witness's description. The "ball" appearance came from interpreting a zoomed-in frame taken from the video: at times the phenomenon shows up as two concentric circles, a typical sign of an out-of-focus image, because the phone, used at night, could not focus on it. Some sequences of the video nonetheless show a point-like phenomenon, consistent with a distant light source. GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of a pass of the ISS.