Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France · 2012-05-06 · from the GEIPAN archive
On May 6, 2012 at 10:11 PM, a witness is intrigued by what they see in the sky: three orange glows move across the sky along a north-south trajectory. Two of the glows disappear suddenly while the third falls toward the ground and is lost from view behind buildings. The appearance of the lights (orange balls), the duration of a few minutes, and the slow, silent movement strongly suggest Thai lanterns. Two hours after the results of the presidential election, some people may have wanted to celebrate the event by releasing lanterns. The weak and unstable wind can explain the gap between the arrivals of the glows in the sky (reinforced by a perspective effect); the brightness of the flame means that even at close range (100m) the details of the object are no longer distinguishable. Furthermore, it seems that for one of the lanterns, part of the burning paraffin block detached and fell to the ground. This case is classified "B": probable observation of 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.
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