The Orange Disc over Binic

On 22 March 1990 three witnesses near Binic in the Côtes-d'Armor each saw a strange luminous phenomenon. They saw it separately and more than once. One said an orange disc flew over him with a "bruit étrange de bruissement d'air" (a strange rustle of air). He was frightened and fell off his moped. Another saw a similar craft twice and strange glows behind the hills.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerospace phenomena. Its summary counts three witnesses, but the published case carries only two statement sheets. Both add detail the summary leaves out, starting with the hour: the two logged sightings came before dawn.

The first sheet is from a woman of about 40 who watched at 4.50 in the morning. She saw a single orange to amber light one or two kilometres to the south-east and heard nothing. The second is from a man of about 40, at 5.15. He describes a fast egg-shaped craft five or six metres long in orange and green, with a mechanical whistle. That whistle sits oddly beside the rustle of air in the summary. The sheets do not say which witness fell from the moped, and the summary does not say who the third witness was.

The file holds no investigation report or gendarmerie statement and names no explanation that was tested. GEIPAN's summary says only that the inquiry "n'a pas permis de trouver une explication" (could not find an explanation). It keeps the case in class D, meaning it investigated and could not explain it.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds witness identities, so the record carries no identified witness. Three separate witnesses sound like corroboration, but none of them is named. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What passed over Binic is not resolved here.