Photographed in Ain, France

On November 2, 2014 at 6:25 PM, a witness observed the silent movement of an orange luminous point that advanced in his direction, then changed trajectory before moving away while rising into the clear sky. Observing an orange point moving slowly in the sky suggests a Thai lantern carried by the wind. In this case, the non-linear movement is not very compatible with this hypothesis, but not impossible due to the very pronounced terrain in this valley; it is common in valleys to have wind at very low altitude that is very different from the wind blowing higher up. However, it is almost impossible to model and therefore predict this wind pattern according to the altitude considered. Moreover, the weather stations are far from the observation site: Lyon, Mâcon, Geneva, and they indicate different winds (a strong southerly wind in Lyon, weaker in Mâcon, a southwest wind in Geneva) and therefore do not allow estimating the wind at Matafelon. The photograph shows a pinkish and blue object, but the witness indicates an orange object: due to the shooting conditions (night, camera movement), the shape that appears in the photo is more the result of various imperfections in the shot than a faithful image of the observed object. Due to these various uncertainties, GEIPAN is not able to provide a justified explanation of the phenomenon; this case is classified "C".