MOON-SUR-ELLE (50) 20.02.2021

Around 07:10 on 20 February 2021, a witness standing outside his front door in Moon-sur-Elle (50) noticed an intense white light in the cloudy sky. It travelled silently due west and illuminated a limited area of the ground. A line of hedges then hid it from view. The sighting lasted 3 seconds and was not corroborated by another account. GEIPAN considered the evidential strength good because the witness described precisely what he had seen. It found no particularly strange characteristic in the account apart from the witness's subjective experience, which is always difficult to quantify. The proposed explanation considerably reduced the apparent strangeness. Surprised by the unusual appearance in the slightly cloudy early-morning sky, the witness immediately rejected his initial fireball explanation for 3 reasons. According to his statement, the light source seemed low, within or just above the cloud layer; the illuminated areas on the ground remained limited; and there was no sound. GEIPAN nevertheless found the observation consistent with a fireball. It explains that the low apparent angular elevation could correspond to a phenomenon probably about 20 km high and several tens of kilometres away. The witness also said that as the cloud moved clear, becoming more transparent, he could better see the light and its source. Although a fireball often lights the ground intensely, GEIPAN notes that cloud and low angular elevation can restrict the illuminated area. Silence does not rule it out: many fireball accounts report no sound at all. The investigation concluded that this was probably a sporadic fireball. GEIPAN classified the case B: probable appearance of a fireball.