Sighting in Montauban, October 6, 1980

At around 6 a.m., someone sitting in a parked car saw a luminous object at low altitude, giving off a white light like that of a neon tube. It was shaped like a rocket and moved in an arc above the houses. After pausing briefly, it set off vertically and, to the witness, looked like an upturned plate, then vanished completely. The sighting lasted a few seconds and no sound was heard. No other witness account was collected. The gendarmes came to the scene but gathered no further usable information.

The witness gave several figures (size, distance, speed), but GEIPAN judged them unusable because there were no angular reference points or known landmarks in the landscape. All that can be drawn from the account is that the object was probably low in angular height above the horizon, at the level of the trees or rooftops. Several details were missing: the witness's exact position, the azimuths and elevations at the start and end, the object's angular size, and exactly how it disappeared. Given these gaps, GEIPAN could not rule out a helicopter moving near the horizon, a bird lit by some kind of spotlight, or a far stranger phenomenon. The case, previously classed D, was re-examined and classed C: insufficient data.