Sighting in Sizun, October 29, 2025

At 19:28 in the evening, the witness was driving on a departmental road in Finistère. The sky was perfectly clear and there was no noise in the surroundings. They noticed an unusual point of light, brighter than a star, and stopped at an intersection to watch it more closely and take photographs.

They described a white point with a slightly bluish tint, surrounded by a diffuse halo. Two fainter beams extended from it, one upward and one downward. Within the upper beam, an elongated greyish "cigar" shape showed darker areas. The phenomenon moved in a straight line from the northwest to the southeast, at about 45° above the horizon. Its brightness stayed steady before fading out gradually, for a total duration of about two minutes. It vanished after crossing the direction of the Moon. A second witness, at home nearby, saw the same thing at the same moment but did not contact the GEIPAN. The witness's photograph could not be analysed.

The investigation concluded it was a fuel dump from the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from Florida that same day with 29 Starlink satellites. The sighting took place about 1 h 55 min after launch, when the stage usually vents its remaining propellant. The plume, lit by the Sun while the ground was already in twilight, can then be seen from a great distance. Very similar sightings were reported in Ireland at the same times, and the Irish media attributed them to this dump. The apparent path, colour, halo, beams and lack of noise all fit this explanation. The GEIPAN classified the case as A.