TUFFE (72) 17.02.2015

Around 20:00 on 17 February 2015, a witness in his garden at Tuffé (72) saw a very bright white tube-like phenomenon with a red mark at the front move east to west. It abruptly went dark in a clear sky after 5–6 seconds. No other accounts were collected. GEIPAN found the elongated brightness and fast straight path characteristic of a fireball. The BOAM station at May-sur-Orne recorded one at the same time in the 150°–160° azimuth sector containing the witness's location, travelling in a direction that would appear east to west. The high elevations of 45°–60° seen from both locations were compatible with a fireball at 50–100 km altitude crossing east to west across the line joining the sites, 130 km apart. The witness was at the eastern limit of the station's view and could therefore have begun seeing it earlier and across more sky, reported as 3/4 of the sky. GEIPAN considered meteoroid entry very probable and classified the case A: fireball.