Essonne, France · 2014-05-12 · from the GEIPAN archive
Photographed in Essonne, France
On May 12, 2014 at 10:26 PM, a mother and her daughter are astonished to see a luminous mass, orange-flame in color, moving across the sky. They then think of an airplane or a hot-air balloon on fire. But the phenomenon moves calmly toward the NE without losing altitude and then disappears, hidden by trees. The observation lasted one minute. Only one testimony was collected.
The luminous mass observed came from Corbeil/Mennecy (south of Evry) and headed toward Etioles/Tigery (east): it therefore seems to follow a direction toward the northeast. The Meteociel data indicates a slight west wind (at 10 PM) to southwest (11 PM), and significant cloud cover (4 to 7/8): the object's movement is therefore consistent with the local wind.
The color, duration, and mode of movement are consistent with a sky lantern, probably released by a private individual, after a party or for a test.
However, the shape described (with orange rays) and the day (Monday) are unusual for a lantern.
Another possible hypothesis would be an airplane approaching Orly, preparing to approach the runways from the west (an airplane head-on appears as a large fixed luminous point, the blinking lights not being powerful enough to be visible under these conditions).
The fact that the photograph taken by the witness produced no result is not surprising: the optics of the Nintendo DS console are insufficiently sensitive for nighttime shots.
GEIPAN classifies this case "B": probable observation of a Thai lantern.
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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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