SACY-LE-PETIT (60) 10.08.2023

On 10 August 2023, while in a friend's garden at Sacy-le-Petit, T1, his wife and their son saw a sharply defined white disc cross the sky rapidly. The time is uncertain, between 16:20 and 17:30. It followed a straight descending path from the zenith to the horizon, disappearing after about 7 seconds. There was no trail and the witness heard no sound. Clouds intermittently hid it, making the observation discontinuous. GEIPAN considered an airliner and a fireball: the latter is the atmospheric entry of a natural solid extraterrestrial body, which may vary in size. The investigation report provides details. Although an airliner was operating at the time, the UAP's apparent speed and lack of a trail made that explanation unlikely. GEIPAN assessed both strangeness and evidential support as medium. This assessment lists 4 observers, although the opening account names only T1, his wife and their son; only 1 account was collected, with no photograph and an imprecise time. GEIPAN considers a daytime fireball probable. The brief duration, very high apparent speed and altitude above the intermittently obscuring clouds fit a daylight fireball. A round shape is reasonably consistent, although fireball witnesses more often describe an elongated form. White is commonly reported. A missing trail is not unusual by day because daylight can make it invisible, particularly when the entering body has relatively little mass. No matching fireball was found in the American Meteor Society database or the FRIPON program, the Fireball Recovery and Inter Planetary Observation Network, which uses triggered automatic video recording. GEIPAN does not find this surprising for a daytime sighting under even partial cloud cover. The lack of further accounts and the uncertain time make additional investigation difficult. GEIPAN classifies the case B: a probable fireball. Under GEIPAN's criteria, evidential support means the quantity of information collected for an account that is considered reliable and objectively established.