Three aligned lights over Perpignan in 1981

Summary

Shortly before leaving for work, a Perpignan resident spotted three luminous points perfectly aligned and evenly spaced, crossing the sky from south to north over about three minutes. The testimony did not reach GEIPAN until 2012, over thirty years later, which inevitably limits the precision of the account. Still, the description is coherent and includes no particularly unusual elements — no sounds, no flickering lights, no sudden maneuvers. The perfect alignment of the points was what most struck the witness. Investigators concluded it was likely a group of satellites in parallel orbits, a reasonable explanation for the era. GEIPAN classified the case as B, meaning it was conventionally resolved as known space objects.