Atmospheric re-entry seen across France

Summary

On 21 February 1978, between 8:45 and 9:00 p.m., hundreds of witnesses across France saw a football-sized sphere followed by a bright trail — green turning reddish — cross the sky westward before vanishing. Seventy-eight documented testimonies, their timing and wide geographic spread pointed to a single high-altitude event. GEIPAN classified it as a known atmospheric phenomenon: a meteorite re-entry. The short duration and elongated trail are typical of such events. Later cases, including one in 2016, confirm the pattern. Today, automatic cameras and online databases allow much faster identification of similar occurrences.