Light point appearing to reverse course over Sète explained by the ISS and NOAA 14

Summary

Sitting at a café terrace in Sète on July 27, 2007, a witness saw a bright point moving at high altitude toward the south on a descending path. After briefly looking away, the point now seemed to travel in the opposite direction and climb, as though it had impossibly reversed course.

Sky analysis solved the puzzle: the witness had sequentially observed the International Space Station, rising toward the southeast, and the NOAA 14 weather satellite, which appeared minutes later at nearly the same point in the sky but on a nearly perpendicular southwest trajectory. The spatial and temporal coincidence created the illusion of a single object changing direction. GEIPAN classified the case as A.