Sighting in Nantes, October 8, 1969

In 2010, a witness reported a much older observation, made with a terrestrial zoom spotting scope (15X to 60X) borrowed from a friend. Two other people were present and, at the time, also saw the phenomenon. On a Wednesday at 7:10 a.m., the three of them noticed a bright point in the sky. The witness then looked at it through the scope: the object was moving slowly from north to south in a back-and-forth motion. They described it as a disc with two satellites turning around the central element. The observation lasted about twenty minutes. The witness stopped looking for a short moment and, on returning, there was nothing left to see.

The GEIPAN received no other testimony about a phenomenon seen in October 1969 in the region or neighbouring regions.

According to the investigation, a bright point in the morning sky is commonplace and could have been Sirius or a weather balloon. Its disappearance is equally ordinary: as the sky brightened at sunrise, the object became invisible. The two satellites seen through the scope are stranger, but zoom scopes are known to be very prone to optical aberrations such as flare, which produces ghost images. The witness maintained that the instrument was of good quality with no marked defect, since they had previously been able to see Jupiter's moons with it. The age of the events, the single testimony and the impossibility of checking the scope's quality made a firm conclusion impossible, so the case is classified C, insufficient data.