SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRES (45) 19.07.2020

During the night of 18–19 July 2020, the main witness and 4 other people were in fields on high ground at Saint-Germain-des-Prés (45), observing comet NEOWISE. Between midnight and 01:00, they saw a very strong white flash, followed by a straight luminous streak moving south, then a much fainter second flash before the streak dissipated. The event lasted less than about 10 seconds. GEIPAN assesses the evidential support as good. Only one direct witness submitted an account, but the questionnaire was carefully completed and the main witness, T1, produced a two-dimensional video reconstruction that provided useful material for analysis. Under GEIPAN's criteria, evidential support is the amount of information considered reliable and objectively established that has been collected for an account. The investigation considered a double satellite flash and a fireball entering the atmosphere (see the investigation report). It favored the fireball for several reasons: - A fireball was documented at the date and time, observed from several locations including places in France and reported through IMO/AMS. - GEIPAN interprets the 2 flashes as successive fragmentation events in the denser atmosphere. It explains the streak lasting a few seconds as a plasma trail produced by vaporized material from the incoming body. - The trail faded from its ends toward its centre, which the source attributes to a higher plasma concentration in the middle taking longer to disperse. - The white colour and short duration fit such an event, and the viewing direction matches the other IMO/AMS reports. GEIPAN classifies the case A: observation of a fireball entering the atmosphere. The source expands IMO as International Meteor Organization and provides https://www.imo.net/.