The article below was published in the daily newspaper Var-Matin - République, France, on October 28, 1973.
Would the "invaders" land on our planet or is it more simply a weather balloon?
A rather curious phenomenon occurred the other morning in the sky of Sainte Maxime: an object of intense luminosity was noticed by many inhabitants of the region, around 7:30 a.m.
Intrigued, several people sought to know the origins of this unusual presence in the sky of the coast... No one could satisfy with precision the specialists in astronomy, of our region, who observed nothing in the sky at that hour.
The only witnesses, from Maximois, saw it... But they don't have the knowledge of the first. Hypotheses are then allowed. It is up to us to choose among these, the most plausible version is undoubtedly that of the weather balloon. Meteorological services frequently launch such devices into the sky, in order to carry out various studies. These sounding balloons are usually launched in the morning, from different corners of France (Pyrenees, Languedoc) and even from Italy.
Since the luminous object that was seen overhead Sainte Maxime at 7:30 a.m., traveling to this point on the French Riviera, in such a short time, seems unlikely.
But nothing is impossible. Such is the thought of Professor Millet, astronomer at the Nice Observatory, who has not seen the object in question.
Was it "invaders"? To this question, no one can give an answer. We met in Sainte Maxime, a young man, passionate about astronomy, who was able to observe, thanks to a telescope, the mysterious object; his name is Patrick Fraycenom and he lives at 16 rue de Lorraine.
"At 7:30 a.m., I opened the windows of my room. My gaze was immediately drawn to an unusual object shining in the sky. It was nothing like a star. Intrigued, I took my telescope magnifying 45 times. This object, distant of approximately 600 m presented the shape of a diamond of whitish color of which three of the angles were incandescent.
"The object remained immobile for approximately two hours, then disappeared within a split second."
This amateur astronomer continues: "I don't think it was a weather balloon, because it had a different shape (usually they are round or oval). On the other hand, the aluminum plates that surround the weather balloons do not shine in the same way, especially not like Friday's object which sparkled only at its extremities. Moreover, how to explain that when it disappeared in the sky, no explosion was noticed while it was at a relatively low ceiling?"
Mr. Patrick Fraycenom concludes: "Not very long ago, I read in a magazine, that a Soviet scientist would have come into contact with extraterrestrial beings. Since Friday morning, I am more and more convinced that this scientist has really been able to achieve the feat. As for my long observation, it allowed me above all to note that no object so far seen in the sky resembled that of the other morning."
Other eyewitnesses have also confirmed the more or less triangular shape of the mysterious object. Anyway, for the moment, nothing more is known. Weather balloon or extraterrestrials, the question is open.
The mystery remains whole and leads us into the maze of obscure files of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), observed so far.
