Sighting in Paray-le-Monial, August 30, 2013

The witness wanted to take a star-trail photograph and set up their camera for that purpose. They noticed nothing at the time. The next day, while looking through the pictures, they found a bright object that stayed fixed, whereas all the stars had left trails during the 5 minutes of exposure between shots. There was therefore no direct sighting, only a photograph.

The investigation pointed out that, in a long-exposure astronomy photo, a bright point is more likely to be a brief flash than something motionless for 5 minutes. When enlarged, the point turned out to be a short streak, a sign of movement during part of the exposure. The preferred explanation is sunlight reflecting off a satellite: according to the Calsky report, the satellites NOSS 3-3A and 3C were crossing the camera's field of view at that time, peaking at 27° above the horizon, although the point in the photo appeared slightly higher. NOSS 3-3C seems capable of a brighter and more variable glint than NOSS 3-3A. The small dark line beneath the white streak is probably a side effect of JPEG compression, as a heavily enlarged photo of the Pleiades shows, where every star is surrounded by a dark line.

GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable photograph of a satellite flare, with some uncertainty remaining about which satellite produced it.