BARAIGNE (11) 05.10.2019

On Saturday, October 05, 2019, in the evening, three people walk their dogs by the Lac de la Ganguise in the municipality of Baraigne (11). One of the witnesses reports: "By inviting my two friends to look at the Great Bear (Ursa Major), we detected a very bright spot as it moved straight from the northwest to the west by turning on itself. The UAP made a sudden 90° turn and disappeared from my field of vision (left)". This is a direct observation, under a clear, cloudless sky, without wind or noise. The strangeness perceived by the 3 witnesses is mainly due to the high brightness of the UAP, its speed and its disappearance by changing direction (to the left). The evidential quality of the accounts is very good: • 3 witnesses made the same observation and each provided a questionnaire. • the end of the trajectory video was transmitted to GEIPAN. • filmed from 8:37 to 8:39 p.m. • the witnesses supplied photographs of maps to establish their location and the northwest-to-east viewing orientation. The hypothesis is that of observing a passage of the International Space Station. The aspects that correspond to the International Space Station are: • high brightness: in terms of visibility, the brightness of the ISS is remarkable (minimum magnitude of -3.6), it was easily observed in the sky; • time of passage: the observation time (20:36:00 - 20:38:15) provided by observers is the time used to check the passage of the object; • The ISS trajectory from the CalSky.com website confirms visibility and trajectory at the time of observation (see the 3 image files of CalSky); • Image 1 confirms the high visibility of the ISS; • Image 2 confirms the passage of the ISS at the time of observation; • Image 3 confirms the positioning of the ISS above the Great Bear (Ursa Major) as indicated by the witnesses; • the early observation azimuth coincides roughly with the ISS trajectory; • the azimut of end of observation coincides well with the ISS trajectory; • the observed and actual directions of movement coincide approximately; • high object in the sky (elevation greater than 60°) and clearly visible during the observation. The main strangeness is the rapid disappearance to the left. In fact, if you put yourself in the witnesses’ viewing plane, the "left turn" actually corresponds to the normal disappearance of the ISS at the end of visibility, whose fading is perceived as recession into the distance and creates an impression of turning. The video transmitted allows a highly luminous point to be seen, but the zooms made do not reveal the ISS’s shape. The image of the small circular light spot, surrounded by concentric rings, is characteristic of the diffraction effect of a highly luminous point by the optics of a camera. As a result, the residual strangeness is low, as explained by the ISS-passage hypothesis. Given the very good evidential quality of the accounts, GEIPAN classifies the phenomenon A: an extremely probable misidentification of an ISS pass.