Sighting in La Villedieu-du-Clain, February 15, 2009

Between 10:20 and 10:30 pm, a witness was puzzled by a shrill, high-pitched noise that stopped abruptly. Their spouse came to join them, and from the window the couple watched a glowing object cross the sky in a straight line. It was first red, then orange. Its path then curved downward, and vegetation soon hid it from view.

The gendarmerie questioned several sky-monitoring organisations, and none had recorded any incident or sudden loss of altitude that night. GEIPAN considered the case somewhat strange, but found it hard to go beyond the gendarmerie's investigation. The length of the sighting seemed too long for a fireball produced by a meteoroid, and the re-entry of space debris travelling from east to west was judged very unlikely. The sound, heard from inside a house, was the most troubling element, and no usual hypothesis could account for it. The case was classified C because of insufficient information.