Sighting in Saint-Thuriau, August 13, 2018

On an August evening under a clear sky, the witness was looking at the stars in the hope of seeing shooting stars. Something moving caught their eye along an axis running from south/south-west toward north/north-east. It was three points of light arranged in a triangle, evenly spaced and all moving at the same speed. They were about as bright as the surrounding stars.

The sighting lasted around thirty seconds, after which the witness lost sight of them among the stars. GEIPAN rated the strangeness as low and the consistency as medium, since the account was detailed but came from a single person.

The investigation found that the description matched a triplet of NOSS-type satellites, a design adopted by China, flying in formation: three faintly bright points moving together in an isosceles triangle, with an apparent size of about 10 cm, the sky visible through them, and an apparent speed of roughly 0.5° per second. During the time window given by the witness, the Yaogan 31 triplet passed along a path that matched that of the phenomenon. The case was therefore classified A: the sighting was of the Yaogan 31 satellite triplet.