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Case of Saint-Amarin, on November 5, 1990:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1995-11-05-STAMARIN-1

Summary:

By a letter on November 9, 1990, a man shared his testimony about what his wife and him observed on November 5, 1990, at about 7 p.m.

They were outside in Saint-Amarin when their gaze was attracted bright lights almost above them, in the West.

The man initially thought they were fireworks rocket, but quickly realized that it was not that. He observed many points of light that appeared round to him, orange-red color, the size of the largest stars that were visible in the sky. He was unable to count them, he thought they were about twenty.

These points were followed by very long trails of intense white-bluish light of unequal length. One of the trails, located approximately in the center, seemed much wider than the others.

All the points moved on parallel lines along a west to east trajectory, at a relatively slow speed, much like an airliner.

The points were not aligned, some more advanced than others. He thought the phenomenon seemed to be at a relatively low altitude.

All of these points and trailed occupied a very large part of the sky and they were very surprised by the size and intensity of the light emitted. They heard no noise.

The phenomenon disappeared behind the mountains, with the trails fading and becoming smaller in the eastward move.

The report was illustrated with this sketch:

The man found this show very beautiful, and specifies they had never seen anything like it before.

They were quite intrigued by this phenomenon, so at about 7:12 p.m. the man phoned to the gendarmerie of Fellering to report what they had just seen.

This was, of course, one of the numerous sightings of what was absolutely not a "UFO", but the flaming debris of a Russian Proton that crossed the sky of France from the South-West to the North-East on that day and time.

Data:

Temporal data:

Geographical data:

Witnesses data:

Ufology data:

Classifications:

Sources:

[Ref. fme1:] FRANCK MARIE:

The report was illustrated with this sketch:

[Ref. rai1:] ROBERT ALESSANDRI:

Discussion:

On November 5, 1990, one or two minutes after 07:00 p.m., a very commonplace phenomenon occurred, explained, and devoid of any actual strangeness, but it nevertheless started a UFO delirium of some of the French ufologists.

The sightings started with an explosive decay over the Bay of Biscay in France, resulting in combustion fragments seen from afar, and generally, as they approached, seen as a group of three main lights - hence it was called a "triangle" - of large angular size, and followed by trails of smoke and sparks.

Once over land, the thing was seen from different angles and at various distances by people on the ground, which gives a range of quite diverse descriptions.

The thing crossed France following a line approximately from Bordeaux to Strasbourg, in silence, in a straight line without any maneuver, in two to three minutes, reaching Strasbourg at about 07:06 p.m.

There were also sightings reported from the South of England, London, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, but not beyond.

In the evening, several Gendarmerie brigades contacted the National Center for Space Studies to report what people told them. Gendarmes brigades of Angers and Tulle got the chance to see the display themselves. In the evening, the Press service of the armies, SIRPA, confirmed that military pilots had seen something without being able to formally identify it. Near Paris airports of Orly and Roissy, the luminous phenomenon was seen from the control towers. Hundreds or even thousands of civilians reported their sightings to the authorities, the Press and other media.

Radio stations, television channels, newspapers, talk of a UFO, then a meteor, and finally the correct explanation appeared through information given by NASA: it was the entering in the atmosphere of the remains of a Russian Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur space center to put a Gorizont 21 satellite in orbit. Calculations had predicted the fallout of the rocket debris at its 36th orbit, crossing France from the South West to the North East on November 5, 1990 around 07:00 p.m.. SEPRA, then officially in charge of such matters, provided this explanation to news agencies on November 9, 1990.

On November 5, 1990 already, an amateur expert in satellites and space debris impact trajectory calculations, Pierre Neirinck, had seen himself, and had also identified the phenomenon, independently of NASA, as space junk from the Proton rocket.

Any sensible ufologist should have understood what is was from the beginning, given the descriptions, and at least understand thereafter that it was a classical space junk case. But some ufologists refused to hear anything about a rocket and continued to talk and write about it as a "UFO flap", of "400 UFOs" or even "thousands of UFOs", often mixing other, unrelated sightings that were more or less of the same day, sighting who have other explanations. This resulted in the continuing presence of this explained case as massive UFO sightings in some of the UFO literature, and of course this includes observations made in Alsace.

For this observation, it is totally obvious that the couple saw the entry in the atmosphere of the Russian rocket debris that night. Absolutely everything is consistent with it, and if there had been a "UFO" in the sky then, one wonders why the witnesses did not also see the burning remains of the Russian rocket.

Franck Marie found it useful to mention that the witnesses had rejected the "official explanation", as if this restored the "legitimacy" of the sighting in support of his idea that there had been there actually a "wave of 400 UFOs all over France."

But in fact, there were several consecutive "official explanations", and given the date of the letter, the explanation the witnesses had rejected was the first one offered; which was that the thing was a meteor.

Well, the witnesses were right, it was not a meteor; but Franck Marie's readers may obviously be misled to believing that what the witnesses had rejected was the next explanation, the correct one, that of the entry into the atmosphere of the debris of the Russian rocket. It may well be that the witnesses later accepted that new, correct explanation!

Evaluation:

Space junk reentry.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

• [fme1] * "OVNI Contact - Une Enquête Choc - 400 OVNI sur la France le 5 novembre 1990!", book by Franck Marie, S.R.E.S. Vérités Anciennes publisher, France, page 286, 1993.
• [rai1] * "Observations file November 5, 1990", listing by Robert Alessandri, on his ufology association website I.N.H. Evidence, France, circa 2005, at http://perso.numericable.fr/~wolf424/univers.ovni/rentrees/statistiques_5_novembre/Catalogue5NovClasse.txt

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