Sighting in Colmar, August 21, 2015

The witness and another person were standing on the tarmac of an aerodrome, waiting for their daughter to make a parachute jump. Around 11:05, under a perfectly clear, sunny blue sky with a light easterly wind and no precipitation, they noticed a pale white, round ball with fuzzy edges and a small apparent size (about 1°). It moved silently, without a trail, in a straight line from the north towards the north-west, and it seemed faster than the aircraft used for the jumps. Its elevation dropped from about 40° to 20°, at roughly 4° per second, and then it stopped abruptly in the direction of the Vosges. The witness mentioned it to the person who had jumped with their daughter, who had seen nothing. Only one statement was collected.

The investigation compared the trajectory with the position of the sun, to the south-east at 43° elevation. The geometry was very favourable to a sun reflection on a flying object, which also explains why the parachutists, higher up and in a different spot, saw nothing. A civil airliner approaching Basel-Mulhouse was ruled out, because civil radar showed no aircraft on that path. A daytime Iridium flash remained plausible, but it could not be checked because no ephemeris was available for that date and place. GEIPAN considered the most likely explanation to be a reflection on the canopy of a military aircraft approaching Luxeuil-Saint-Sauveur air base. The request for military traffic information went unanswered. The case was classified B, probably identified.