TEMPLE-SUR-LOT (LE) (47) 30.01.2012

At 07:35 on 30 January 2012, a witness at Le Temple-sur-Lot (47) saw what he first thought was a star: a spherical white object with a bluish centre, apparently the size of a 5-cent coin. It suddenly moved overhead to his zenith, zigzagged from right to left, moved away very fast, zigzagged again and headed south until it disappeared. GEIPAN found that at precisely that time the International Space Station crossed the sky from northwest to southeast, in directions very close to those reported, shining extremely brightly at magnitude −4, comparable to Venus. The object's appearance fitted the ISS, but its reported motion did not, since the ISS follows a straight apparent path. GEIPAN reasoned that the witness could not have missed the ISS and attributed the movements to familiar perceptual illusions, autokinesis and autostasis, referring to its material on perceiving a point of light in the sky. Such illusions are frequent against a uniform background. Cloud veiled the fainter stars, leaving the ISS as the only visible light against the sky. GEIPAN nevertheless retained slight doubt about whether the ISS was visible because of the partial cloud, and classified the case B: probable observation of the International Space Station. The source also describes a “second” observation on 22 January, earlier than the main event, without further witness details. GEIPAN noted an ISS pass above the northern horizon that day from 07:06 to 07:13. A third observation occurred on Friday 24 February at 21:20: 2 spheres resembling those in the previous account but bright red, following one another precisely. GEIPAN found that 2 American NOSS reconnaissance satellites passed near the northern horizon at exactly that time, but cautioned that these satellites are usually too faint to see with the naked eye.