An account in Gironde, France

On April 7, 2012 at around 11:30 PM, two people noticed the silent movement of about a hundred pinkish luminous points in the cloudy sky. Two successive groups as well as other luminous points following one after another in single file were distinguished at low altitude. All the points came from the NNE and turned due East. The observation lasted 30 minutes. Only one testimony was collected. The observation of a sequence of white and pink balls, on a weekend night, clearly suggests a release of lanterns, probably from a private party. The orderly movement, including a change of trajectory, is common with lanterns, because it results from them all following the same wind current, which is not necessarily uniform near the ground. White and pink lanterns are very popular for wedding parties. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as B: probable Thai lanterns.

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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.