MARQUETTE-LEZ-LILLE (59) 22.02.2014

Around 19:45 on 22 February 2014, a woman returning from shopping in Marquette-lez-Lille (59) parked outside her home and saw a point of light moving left across the sky. After about 2 minutes it left her field of view, so she went into the garden. There she saw it again and noticed a second light apparently moving in the opposite direction. The two crossed. The first continued away while the second stopped and remained fixed until clouds covered the sky, sometime between 10 minutes and 1 hour after the observation began. No additional accounts were collected. GEIPAN assessed the case as moderately strange but sufficiently supported by numerous precise, coherent details. It identified the International Space Station passing close in the sky to the prominent star Sirius. The ISS was visible at a time very close to the reported time on a matching trajectory. Its close apparent passage by Sirius could briefly have created an illusion that the star was moving in the opposite direction. GEIPAN explains that it questioned the witness's interpretation in the context of fatigue, surprise and an observation made in several phases, rather than her visual perception. The case was classified A: misidentification of the ISS passing Sirius along its apparent path.