Sighting in Mauriac, January 4, 1990

At about 12:40 p.m., around ten children were in a school playground when they noticed a dark object, oval or cylindrical depending on the account. They described it as having "legs" and "portholes". It passed silently about 150 m above the building. The teachers, who were alerted, had not noticed anything themselves.

On 16 January, a weather balloon launched from Bordeaux was found in a neighbouring commune. Investigators reconstructed the shape of the balloon from its debris and were able to match it to what the children had seen: the "legs" were in fact the lower part of the radar reflector. GEIPAN therefore identified the object as this weather balloon and classified the case A. The object's diameter was estimated at 5 to 6 metres.