Sighting in Haguenau, May 9, 2018

At around 7:30 p.m., a witness at a rugby field noticed a very bright cylindrical ball in the sky, along with a black ball. The object came from the northeast and headed southwest, with no sound at all. The witness watched it for about a minute before losing sight of it, and had time to take three photographs. No other witness came forward to the GEIPAN. The witness was well read on UFOs and had made other strange sightings in the past (never reported to the GEIPAN), and had high hopes for these photos.

The investigation concluded it was an airliner. The speed of movement and the object's appearance in the pictures both point that way. In the unzoomed photo, equivalent to naked-eye vision, the aircraft is just a bright dot with no contrail, which is ordinary. The strangeness most likely came from the zoom, or from particularly sharp eyesight, which revealed an elongated shape without wings. The GEIPAN has handled many cases where only the fuselage reflects sunlight, making the plane look like a cigar, especially when the sun is crosswise to the aircraft, as here, with the sun at an azimuth of 282°, perpendicular to the northeast–southwest path.

A reconstruction located the aircraft: at 7:29 p.m., the time of the photo, it was flying from northeast to southwest, matching the testimony. Using the IPACO software, the object's height in the sky was estimated at around 35° from the trees bordering the field, compared with about 41° from the radar capture (aircraft 12 km away at 10.6 km altitude). The gap is explained by uncertainties about the witness's position, the tree heights and the synchronization. The black balls were most likely dirt marks on the lens, which were numerous on the photos. The case was classified A: aircraft.