Sighting in Tours, July 30, 2014

The witness was sitting in their garden at around 11:15 pm when they noticed a very bright white light. It was oval, surrounded by a bluish halo, and moved without flashing at about the speed of an aircraft. The object gained altitude and then vanished. The witness then saw some other points of light. The bright light was visible for only a few seconds.

The GEIPAN investigation linked this description to a satellite pass. The Calsky data show that many satellites, more or less visible, were passing over the area at that time. In particular, at 11:16 pm it lists an "Iridium flare", a fairly rare event for any given location, in which sunlight briefly reflects off a highly reflective part of the satellite. This is probably what the witnesses saw, although the questionnaire leaves some ambiguity about where in the sky the phenomenon appeared. The reflection fades gradually as the satellite moves along its orbit and its orientation to the sun changes. Observers often read this fading as the object moving away, as happened here.

The second part of the sighting probably corresponds to the two NOSS 3 satellites (4A and 4C), which fly in formation. Their magnitude is around 4, like stars barely visible to the naked eye, and their apparent path seen from the ground is a great circle. GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of satellites.