Sighting in La Villedieu-du-Clain, October 14, 2015

At 11:31 pm, a witness noticed several flashes appearing one after another in the night sky, in a part of the sky they could pinpoint clearly. They checked the Heavens Above website but found neither an Iridium satellite flash nor any satellite pass that could match what they had seen.

GEIPAN rated the case as moderately strange but sufficiently consistent. The investigation concluded that it was most probably a misidentification of an uncontrolled satellite spinning relatively fast on its own axis at very high altitude, its reflections producing the flashes. A reconstruction showed that 5 or 6 satellites lay in the area of sky the witness described and could account for the observation. Monitoring their passes was expected to establish which one caused the flashes.

The case is classified B: probable misidentification with a satellite reflection phenomenon involving a satellite at very high altitude.