Sighting in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, October 30, 2013

At 11:38 pm, a witness saw three luminous objects flying at the same height, silently and at high speed. They moved in a straight line for a few seconds, then vanished above the rooftops. One of them made a slight sideways movement.

GEIPAN noted that such very fast points of light suggest shooting stars or bolides. The fact that the three objects travelled in parallel is nevertheless remarkable: it could have been a meteoroid that broke into three pieces as it entered the atmosphere. The small lateral shift of one object may be a perceptual illusion known as autokinesis.

The BOAM network recorded many bolides that night, including one at 22:38 UT, but those were seen from eastern France, so it was not the same event. The network has no camera near the observation site. The frequency of bolides that night only indicates a notable likelihood of seeing one. Given how brief the sighting was, that there was only one witness, and that there were three objects, the bolide hypothesis remains fragile. GEIPAN classified the case C, for insufficient information, pending any possible cross-checking.