SABLE-SUR-SARTHE (72) 30.10.2013

On 30 October 2013 at 23:38, a witness saw 3 luminous objects travelling silently at the same height and at high speed. They disappeared above the rooftops. GEIPAN considers lights moving rapidly in a straight line over a few seconds suggestive of meteors or fireballs. The unusual feature is 3 objects travelling in parallel. A meteoroid could have broken into 3 during atmospheric entry. One object’s small sideways movement could be the autokinetic illusion (see the article on perceiving the movement of a point of light in the sky). The BOAM network recorded numerous fireballs that night, including one at exactly 22:38 UTC, but they were seen to the east from eastern France, so that was a different event. BOAM has no camera near Sablé-sur-Sarthe (72). The frequency of events that night only indicates a substantial chance of seeing a fireball. Given the brief sighting, single account and 3 objects, GEIPAN considers the fireball hypothesis very weak. The source also references http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/index.php?id=382. GEIPAN classifies the case C pending possible corroboration.