The Upright Cigar over Nantes

It was around two o'clock in the morning on 15 December 1979. From her flat on the third floor a woman in Nantes saw an orange object in the sky that seemed to glow. It had the shape of a cigar but stood upright, not lying flat. It moved without a sound from north to south until the city's buildings hid it from view.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerial phenomena. Its file here is short: a paragraph of description and a single witness questionnaire. The summary line reads "Observation d'un objet en forme de cigare, phosphorescent" (sighting of a cigar-shaped, phosphorescent object).

The questionnaire gives the witness's age as 70. It records the time as 02:00 and describes one cylindrical object, orange and fire-coloured, moving slowly in "silence total" against the urban skyline. It marks the weather as rain and storms. That detail sits oddly with a clear view of a glowing shape, and GEIPAN's page does not comment on it. No distance or size is given.

GEIPAN says no other testimony was collected and the phenomenon "reste inexpliqué" (remains unexplained). It publishes no investigation report and names no explanation it considered and rejected. The case sits in class D, meaning GEIPAN investigated and could not explain it, with the label "phénomène étrange à très étrange" (a strange to very strange phenomenon) of medium to strong consistency.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds the identities of its witnesses, so the record carries no identified witness. There is also only one witness, seen from one window at night. A tier measures sourcing, not the quality of GEIPAN's investigation. What passed over the rooftops of Nantes is not resolved here.