An account in Gard, France

On Saturday, December 17, 2016, at around 8:45 p.m., three people in a parking lot observe about thirty luminous points of white color (including one orange) moving silently in the hazy sky. A video is made. Only one testimony is collected. The witness does not want the video to be published. This is most likely an observation of a release of Thai lanterns. The visual appearance on the video is consistent. The wind direction in Nîmes that evening (taken from the Infoclimat record) is from North to South: it is consistent with the movement of the UAPs (the camera observes generally toward the East and sees the UAPs pass from left to right). The objections the witness raises regarding this hypothesis are the disparity of trajectories between UAPs and the fact that some can join others. Nevertheless, the video shows that the UAPs do follow one another in the same direction from left to right, but urban conditions can create local wind irregularities with currents faster than others. Finally, the video shows a few fixed points, less luminous, which are probably stars because the cloud cover that evening according to the Météociel record is low (1/8) and some stars are visible at low elevation, especially in the East sector (Procyon, Betelgeuse, Rigel). In the video, the moving luminous points that pass in front of fixed points that are less luminous or less sharp are probably lanterns passing in front of stars. The other objection or oddity reported of a plume or halo around the luminous points when the camera zooms are meaningless and purely the result of optical or video aberrations. It is noted that this happens on a weekend evening, always more favorable for festive events of lantern releases. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as B: probable observation of Thai lanterns.