13 September 2022, around 21:00 local; about five minutes
Outcome: Open (Unresolved). GEIPAN’s December 2025 investigation retained category D after aircraft, Starlink flare, projected-light and atmospheric-optics checks. The repeating pattern remains unidentified, with one witness and no event recording.
A light that seemed to repeat the same passage
On the evening of 13 September 2022, a person sitting in a Ruffec garden noticed a white point repeatedly appearing, moving and disappearing in the same part of the sky. The account describes roughly six-second cycles over about five minutes, with some variation. The witness first compared it with an aircraft light.
This was not a report of a photographed sphere or a measured circular vehicle. A repeating light can create an impression of rotation without revealing whether one source is turning, several sources are passing, or visibility is changing. The enquiry had to test that pattern against possible causes.
A prompt report and later analysis
The witness supplied a questionnaire the following day, together with a location map, an annotated setting photograph and a drawing. These were reconstructions, not photographs of the phenomenon. GEIPAN’s detailed investigation report is dated 3 December 2025; the observation remains a 2022 case.
No additional witness or event recording was available in the reviewed file. The early written account is valuable for its proximity to the event, while the later analysis can compare it with external information. Neither feature turns estimated cycle lengths into instrumentally timed measurements.
Aircraft and Starlink were tested, not merely mentioned
The investigators reconstructed aircraft traffic and found flights along the relevant direction. Their frequency did not account satisfactorily for the reported number and rhythm of appearances. The resemblance to aircraft lighting nevertheless remains part of the evidence, rather than something to suppress.
They also examined Starlink flares. The report found problems with the reconstructed direction and, especially, the witness’s relatively high elevation estimate compared with the low-horizon geometry expected for that explanation. Projected lights and reflections involving atmospheric ice were considered as well, without yielding an accepted identification.
Why the viewing geometry mattered
The official comparison placed the Sun roughly 29 degrees below the horizon and discussed a northwesterly solar direction, while the reported view was westward and much higher above the horizon. These are the investigation’s reconstructed conditions, not new UKPX measurements. They explain why the resemblance to satellite flares was considered insufficient in this particular file.
Likewise, aircraft really present in the reconstructed sky were not dismissed as irrelevant. The unresolved question was whether their number and intervals could generate the reported repeated pattern. Reliable timing and angular information would help test that specific alternative without assuming that each apparent repeat represented one physical object returning.
What Open means for this case
GEIPAN retained category D: unidentified after investigation. UKPX uses Open (Unresolved) to reflect that documented result. The feature-tag field is deliberately empty: a white point is not enough to establish an orb, and a repeated appearance is not automatically a flash or a group of simultaneous lights.
The enquiry narrows the problem but leaves important dependencies on testimony. Accurate elevation, timing and position would be especially useful in a reassessment. A short exposure or another observer at a different location could distinguish successive sources from repeated visibility of one source much more effectively than a more elaborate drawing made afterwards.
Location and map reference
Ruffec, Charente, France. Broad commune reference from the French government geographic API; not the witness home, precise observation position or object location. This listing does not advertise access to private property.
Sources and review
CNES–GEIPAN official case record and the original investigation report. Official current page;30-page report pp 1–4 and 28–30; aircraft and satellite conclusions reviewed. Annotated environment images distinguished from event photographs. Sources and current classification checked 13 November 2026. The incident date above is distinct from the later investigation and archive-update dates.