Vaucluse, France · 2016-12-17 · from the GEIPAN archive
Red lights in Vaucluse, France
On Saturday, December 17, 2016, at around 8:45 p.m., a witness is intrigued by the silent movement of a very bright orange-red light in the sky. The light disappears quickly, but the witness had time to take a photo. Only one testimony will be collected. The witness probably observed a Thai lantern. The description he gives of what he sees with the naked eye is consistent. Moreover, it is a weekend evening, always more conducive to a festive lantern release event. The wind measured on Infoclimat is weak and consistent with the impression of slow movement of the UAP. The strangeness noted by the witness and probably at the origin of his testimony (moreover a considered one, since it was late, more than a month after): it stems from the observation of his photo which shows an orange arabesque. This is classic and results from a motion blur effect. The photo was taken with a long exposure (4 seconds) and the witness moved before the end. On the photo there is a strong central bright point corresponding to the stable period of the shot, followed by the motion blur effect producing a light intensity inversely proportional to the speed of movement (the faster the lantern passes in front of the detector pixels, the less these are "exposed"). The fact that this blur does not appear on the other bright points in the photo (likely stars) is explained by the fact that these points are far less bright to begin with and only manage to "expose" the detector pixels during the stable period, and pass too quickly in front of the other detector pixels during the blur phase. The fact that the lantern is no longer present in the sky after the photo is pure coincidence; the lantern went out. The fact that the witness describes the UAP's movement in his viewfinder suggests that he then took a little time to look at the finished photo on his viewfinder before looking back at the sky; the near-simultaneity between photo and disappearance may not be as clear-cut, although it is also possible. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as B: Thai lantern.
On November 12, 2012, at 2:43 a.m., a witness observed for 20 seconds the passage across the sky of a phenomenon he did not recognize. No other testimony was collected. The witness described…
Recent testimony (2011) about an old sighting made on January 15, 1978 between 6:45 PM and 7:10 PM. The witnesses, in a car on the D177 between Venasque and Gordes, will make several success…
Several evenings in April 1979, between 11 PM and midnight, two people observe in the sky three blinking white and red lights arranged in a triangle. On April 17, between 11 PM and 11:30 PM,…
On October 2, 2007, at midnight, a witness is surprised to see a red light moving at very high speed and horizontally in the sky. The observation lasted a few seconds without any noise being…
On November 4, 1976, at around 9:45 p.m., several witnesses observed the slow and silent passage of a triangular shape following the direction Marseille - La Ciotat. The object was slightly …
On June 14, 2011, at around 10:30 p.m., two people were intrigued by the silent movements at variable speed of a luminous object in the sky. The observation lasted between 5 and 10 minutes. …
On August 3, 2016 at 11:06 PM, a witness and his partner observe the slow and silent movement of two luminous objects (sunflower yellow) that follow each other. One of the witnesses takes a …
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On July 14, 2009 at 11:10 PM on the beach, a witness observes in the clear sky the silent west-east movement of a very bright red-orange luminous phenomenon. It disappears at the horizon.
Th…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On December 19, 2015 at 8:17 PM, a witness alerted by his son observes from a distance a large slightly ovoid ball sparkling with a very bright orange. This ball moves through the sky toward…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
Keep reading
There are thousands more like this in the record. Open one at random, or read the ones the most people recognise.
Or if something like this happened to you, write it down and we will look for the others who saw it too.
Know someone this happened to?
If this reminds you of something a friend or a relative told you once and never mentioned again, send them this page. Reading that a stranger described the same thing is usually the part that helps.
Nothing is tracked back to you and nothing is sent on your behalf. The link is just the page you are reading.
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.
Anomaly