An account in Bas-Rhin, France

On April 30, 2012 at around 9:30 PM, a witness observes in the sky the movement of an orange luminous point followed by three other points. These move on a continuous upward trajectory before gradually disappearing in the sky. The witness takes videos. Of low strangeness and good consistency, thanks to the videos, despite certain inaccuracies in directions that are all in all common, this observation case has all the characteristics of a misidentification due to a group of Thai lanterns released on the occasion of festivities on the eve of May 1st. The local wind direction cannot be stated with certainty despite a general tendency compatible before the storm around the observation site, so the verification of the conformity of the local wind with the movement of the objects is insufficient. It is also noted that rain is poorly suited to the release of lanterns. GEIPAN did not search for the authors of the release. Given this finding, GEIPAN classifies this case as B, as a probable observation of Thai lanterns.