Sighting in Montfermeil, August 19, 2013

At around 11 p.m., a witness noticed what looked like a star in the sky. It first seemed to be entering the atmosphere, then stopped, lit up the sky and moved off in the opposite direction to its original path.

The investigation relied on several objective elements: the exceptional brightness of the phenomenon, its colour matching that of a satellite, its visibility from where the witness was, and the match between the time of the sighting and the pass of the satellite Iridium 49. GEIPAN concluded that the witness had seen an Iridium flash produced by that satellite. Such a flash comes from sunlight reflecting off the satellite's particularly large antenna, and it is so bright that it can be seen even in broad daylight. The case was classified A: observation of an Iridium satellite flash.