Sighting in Cholet, November 24, 2016

Around 5:15 pm, the witness was driving with their son when they noticed a bright white phenomenon in the sky to the south-west. It was very elongated and pointed upward, and its brightness was dazzling, like a street lamp seen in broad daylight. The witness stopped and watched it through 8x25 binoculars but could make out no further detail. Back home, they looked for it again and, with 12x50 binoculars, found two dark, triangular objects, invisible to the naked eye and motionless, both relative to each other and to the many surrounding clouds. According to the witness, these were watched continuously between 5:30 and 6:00 pm, until clouds hid them. They sent GEIPAN a drawn reconstruction showing two inverted "V" shapes with a dot at the base, slightly offset in height and azimuth. They were the only witness. They thought the two branches looked like aircraft contrails but ruled this out, since contrails are usually parallel and an aircraft eventually moves across the sky.

The investigation concluded it was a misidentification of aircraft condensation trails. These are not always parallel: in a very stable atmosphere they can be short and spread apart depending on the engine layout. At dusk their colour can range from white to grey or black. The first phenomenon was probably a persistent trail at high altitude, still lit by the sun, which set at 5:18 pm; the contrast with the darker clouds would explain its brightness. The apparent stillness is explained by weak high-altitude wind, the great distance and height of the aircraft, and fast-moving clouds that hid their slow motion. Only the duration of the observation of the last two phenomena poses a problem: at 5:30 pm the sun was still in the same direction and should have lit those trails. They could only look dark later, so the observation probably began well after 5:30 pm. GEIPAN classified the case as B.