Sighting in Guipavas, November 22, 1981

Between 7:55 and 8:00 a.m., four independent groups of people noticed a reddish-orange luminous sphere low above the horizon, in a sky with little cloud. It went out suddenly, or seemed to drop into a field near one of the aerodrome's runways. The next day, the aerodrome's air traffic controller contacted the gendarmerie. Eight statements were collected, seven of which described the sighting. It was brief, and perceptions varied from one witness to another: two mentioned sparks or a trail, three saw the shape change, and accounts differed on whether the light moved or stayed still. One witness put the duration at one to two minutes, while the others did not exceed 15 seconds.

The GEIPAN concluded that the witnesses had probably seen a meteoroid entering the atmosphere. The color, the ball shape, the sparks and trail, the short duration, the probably slow and steady movement, and the disappearance by descending all fit this explanation. It would have been a tangential entry seen head-on, which produces a light low on the horizon that moves little or even appears motionless. According to the GEIPAN, the differences between accounts are explained by what each witness was doing (some were moving, others standing still) and by the geometry of the view; the one-to-two-minute duration was probably overestimated. The remaining uncertainty comes mainly from the shape changes described, which had never been observed before. The case, first classified D, became B after reexamination. An earlier mention of a radar echo at the CRNA was corrected: the police report stated that nothing abnormal had been noticed, and the radar spots could have been an echo or interference.