Alpes-Maritimes, France · 2015-12-27 · from the GEIPAN archive
On December 27, 2015, between 5:05 PM and 5:15 PM, a motorist is astonished to see in the sky the presence of a fluorescent orange object shaped like "an overturned soup plate." The object, which seems stationary, is surrounded by an orange halo. The object heads off in a southwesterly direction, and no noise is heard during its movement. It disappears at the horizon. Several motorists, stopped at the side of the road, reportedly also observed the phenomenon. Only one testimony will be reported. The observation of an orange ball in the sky for a few minutes, on a weekend night, strongly suggests a Thai lantern, probably released from Saint-Vallier at the end of a private party held for the year-end holidays. The observed movement is slight, heading toward the southwest. The wind recorded at the Auribeau-sur-Siagne weather station, 12 km away, is calm (see the Infoclimat record for the day of the observation. At this hour, in a mountainous area, at sunset, there are very local winds, depending on the valleys, very light, and difficult to predict. This weather record does not provide decisive information to confirm the Thai lantern hypothesis. The lack of results in the photo is not surprising: cell phone cameras perform very poorly in low light. Nevertheless, despite the lack of elements allowing this hypothesis to be confirmed, given the description of the phenomenon and the high frequency of lantern releases during the year-end period, the GEIPAN classifies this case as "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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