The Noyal-sur-Vilaine triangle

On 26 October 1990 a man was driving home from work at Noyal-sur-Vilaine, a commune just east of Rennes in Ille-et-Vilaine. From behind the wheel he watched a triangular object "gros comme un avion" (as big as an aircraft). It changed direction as he watched. It moved without making any noise.

That is the whole of GEIPAN's own summary. It runs to two sentences.

What is on the record

The source is GEIPAN, the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena. Its file 1990-10-01224 holds that summary and a single witness questionnaire, and the questionnaire carries most of the detail.

It records a man of 40 and times the sighting at 19.40 under a partly cloudy sky. He looked south and judged the object to be between 500 and 1,000 metres away. He compared its bulk to a long-haul airliner, a Boeing 747. Its speed varied and it was silent. One detail sits awkwardly with the summary. The questionnaire codes the shape as a three-dimensional cone, while the summary calls it a triangle. A cone seen from the side can read as a triangle, but the file does not explain the difference.

GEIPAN classes the case D. That is its category for a phenomenon it investigated and could not identify. Its conclusion is a single line: "aucune identification du phénomène n'a été possible" (no identification of the phenomenon was possible). The published file lists no hypotheses that were tested or ruled out, and it mentions no other witnesses.

Why it sits where it does

This case grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds the identities of witnesses, so its record carries no identified witness, and this sighting had only one. The tier measures sourcing and says nothing about the quality of the investigation. What the record holds is one driver, a silent object the size of a jet and a state body that could not name it. What he saw is not resolved here.