The article below was published in the daily newspaper Var-Matin - République, France, on November 15, 1980.
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There is no longer any mystery around the appearance, the other evening, in the sky of South-East France of the UFO which had been observed by a number of inhabitants of the Côte d'Azur, the Var region, Corsica and even the Italian coast: the luminous phenomenon was observed live by Mr. Couteau, director of the Nice observatory who identified this "object" as a very curious, rare, but completely natural meteor. He described it in these terms:
"It is a meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere at a low incidence. The slow speed of 6 to 7° per second depends, in fact, on the direction of the real speed relative to the observer. The actual size of these meteorites does not exceed a few centimeters. The body was located above Italy and probably fell offshore, in the Mediterranean, after being completely or almost completely consumed. The brightness, the slow speed of the phenomenon, its duration and its wake are quite remarkable," concluded Mr. Couteau.
