FRANOIS (25) 06.02.2019

On 6 February 2019 at 06:30, a motorist on a forest road in Franois saw a whitish, cylindrical luminous phenomenon in his rear-view mirror, brightly illuminating the road. The UAP passed in front of his vehicle and lit its interior. Surprised, he stopped and got out, but the phenomenon had disappeared. He heard no unusual sound. GEIPAN collected only 1 account. GEIPAN favoured a fireball, or very bright meteor, as the explanation; see the investigation report. The cylindrical shape accompanied by a beam of light, very rapid and silent movement, and duration of several seconds strongly suggest such an event. The FRIPON network recorded no fireball in northeastern France during the night of 5–6 February 2019; its only event concerned southern France. However, several fireballs were reported towards the end of that night on 6 February. BOAM recorded 4 between 05:00 and 06:00 UTC, or 06:00–07:00 local time. All were recorded by station LITIK 1 at Fléville-devant-Nancy (54), in an area consistent with the UAP sighting; see Figure 9. GEIPAN assessed the case as having weak evidential support: there was only 1 witness, no photograph or sketch of the UAP, and the witness had given a statement only to the gendarmerie without completing GEIPAN's ground-observation questionnaire (QT). Many details of the account were therefore unknown. Nevertheless, the description strongly suggested a known astronomical phenomenon. GEIPAN found the case relatively low in strangeness and weak in evidential support, and considered a fireball a probable explanation. Several fireballs were recorded in northeastern France and Germany between 06:00 and 07:00 local civil time on 6 February 2019. None, however, could be conclusively linked to this sighting because of the single witness and missing information. The case was classified B: probable misidentification of a fireball.