Sighting in Sauto, February 16, 1978

A witness reported to the gendarmerie, ten days later, something they had seen at about 6:40 a.m. that lasted around a minute. They were driving their truck along the RN 116 when they noticed a luminous phenomenon ahead of them, above the Têt valley, which they could not explain. They stopped and got out of the vehicle. The light first stayed still, level with their line of sight. It then shot off at very high speed toward the north-northeast, silently, passing over the witness and leaving a luminous trail that they compared to that of fireworks. A second object, ovoid in shape and dark matte in color, followed the first.

The gendarmerie found no other witness. It recorded no anomaly on the EDF electrical network and no marks on the ground or on the surrounding vegetation.

GEIPAN re-examined the case, originally classified D. The duration, shape, size, color and trajectory match an atmospheric re-entry of a satellite, and the re-entry of Cosmos 250 took place on 15 February 1978, at the time and along the path described. The weather of the 15th matches the account, while that of the 16th does not, so the witness had the wrong date, understandable given how late they reported. The starting point placed below the horizon in the report came from the witness's own inference from the phrase "level with my line of sight", an imprecise notion. Their sincerity was never questioned. The case, of low strangeness, is classified A: a misidentification of the re-entry of Cosmos 250.