Orange object observed through binoculars in Sali, Algeria (1959)

Summary

On 14 September 1959 at 5:10 a.m., three witnesses in Sali, Algeria, spotted an orange luminous object. By 5:30 it had stopped, then drifted slowly northeast for forty minutes, changing shape and colour. They watched through binoculars; no sound or trail was noted. Only one testimony with two sketches of the object's evolution was collected.

Two days earlier, on 12 September, a similar phenomenon had been reported — an orange star-sized point that moved rapidly for thirty seconds at high altitude, also silently. GEIPAN classified the 14 September sighting as B, likely a weather balloon illuminated by the rising sun, supported by its proximity to dawn and imprecise directional data. A meteoroid was proposed for the 12 September event.