Sighting in Mareuil-le-Port, August 26, 2011

At around 6 a.m., a witness and their spouse noticed a luminous phenomenon moving slowly downward across the sky. The sighting lasted about two minutes. The points of light varied in shape, color and brightness. They did not all move at the same speed or along the same path: the last one crossed the witness's field of view much faster than all the others.

Investigators first considered the atmospheric re-entry of a satellite or space debris, which the duration and characteristics of the sighting could suggest. However, such an event should have been seen by many witnesses over a wide area (northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and so on), and no trace of one was found for that date. The phenomenon therefore appears to have been very local. The movement, consistent with the wind, could point to a group of balloons, but the variety of the lights makes it hard to identify the exact type of passive craft. A civil or military air exercise above air base BA112, about forty kilometers northeast of the observation site and roughly 20° off the direction the witness was looking, cannot be ruled out, but it could not be checked.

GEIPAN considered the case clearly strange at first glance, but too imprecise to reach a firm conclusion. A field investigation into the trajectories and orientations would help learn more. The case was provisionally classified C (insufficient data), pending further information.