MEYTHET (74) 11.04.2015

On 11 April 2015, a witness at his kitchen window in Meythet (74) saw 3 successive luminous phenomena. The opening sentence gives 21:41, while the first detailed observation is timed 20:41. First came a large white flash to the east at about 45° elevation. Several high-altitude aircraft were in that direction at 20:41; see FlightRadar24. The Sun had set about 20 minutes earlier, but aircraft at 13,000 m were still sunlit. GEIPAN explains that a brief reflection off the underside of wings or fuselage could produce the flash while the distant aircraft remained invisible to the naked eye. Next came a lower orange flash moving for 2 seconds, matching an Iridium flare at low elevation reddened by the atmosphere. The attached Calsky record shows 2 flares in that direction near the reported time: one at 20:46, magnitude -2.5, and one at 20:55, probably too low to see in mountainous terrain. A third flash lasted only half a second and could have been sunlight reflected by one of the many satellites visible then. The case is classified B: very probable observations of sunlight reflected by an aircraft and satellites.