VIDEO: An impressive meteor spotted in the western sky

More On: UFO

Many witnesses saw a fireball slice the sky of the West, from the Gironde to the Loire-Atlantique, this Sunday evening at 9:33 p.m. This kind of "racing car", as specialists call them, remain rare in observe.

It is 9:33 pm on this Sunday evening, when the Vendée sky lights up. "I looked at the time, I was in the car," recalls Thibault Burban, journalist for Ouest-France. He then set off for Les Sables-d'Olonne (Vendée), when he saw a kind of fireball appear, straight ahead: "It was heading from south to north, towards the ocean."

Our colleague admires the spectacle for a few seconds, through his windshield. "It was amazing! It caught the eye ... Especially that large, very pale, light green trail in its wake." Even though he is not an expert, for him he is not a shooting star. "It was pretty big there. I quickly thought of a meteorite", explains the young man. Arrived at his destination, he notes on social networks that he is not the only one to have seen the phenomenon.

Cédric Liopé, used to tracking down the UFO near Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie (Vendée), even managed to film the meteor and publish the video on the Net. “I came out at half-time of the football match between France and Portugal… I grabbed my night vision camera straight away. It was amazing!” In the images, five seconds of a large ball with a luminous trail. "I was told it was green, but I couldn't see it." With his eye fixed on his camera, he remained focused so as not to miss his plan. "And in the end, I saw two flashes over the ocean."

This Monday, many Internet users confirm having seen the fireball. From Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-vie via La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée) or even near Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), we wonder about the phenomenon: "Shooting star, extraterrestrial presence?" The Vigie Ciel Fripon site, which lists this type of event, has collected some 107 testimonies. Some come from Belgium, Great Britain, but also from the Paris region, Brittany, Gironde ... And allow you to detail the time, color or direction taken by the UFO.

The scene was filmed by a surveillance camera from one of our Rezé readers:

At the Vendée astronomical center, where the meteor was also sighted, it is confirmed that it is "something very spectacular", which we have time to follow. "It can last several seconds and it lights up the sky", explains the vice-president of the center, Stéphane Gonzalez ... For the specialist, it would be a "racing car". "It's an asteroid fragment that can weigh up to several tons and most of the time burns up entirely. Sometimes it creates an explosion, the shock wave of which can do damage." This is what happened in Russia in 2013, causing many injuries.

This time, no casualties to be deplored. Just hundreds of people marked by the beauty of a nighttime spectacle that remains relatively rare, explains Stéphane Gonzalez. Each year in the world "there are about a hundred and maybe ten in Europe". We still have to see them.