Vaucluse, France · 2017-08-19 · from the GEIPAN archive
On August 19, 2017 between 10:00 PM and 10:10 PM, a witness and his wife, on the terrace of their second-floor apartment, observed the movement of about twenty white luminous points moving in formation along a straight trajectory in a clear sky. No noise and no trail were noticed during the rapid movement. The observation lasted about 3 to 4 minutes, with the phenomenon moving away toward the south. The witness contacted Avignon aerodrome and the gendarmerie without result. The witness rejects the hypotheses of drones, Thai lanterns, aircraft, and space debris. Only one testimony was collected on this phenomenon. The description is consistent with that of a flight of Thai lanterns. The witness's objection to this hypothesis is mainly based on the speed, which he estimates to be on the order of that of an aircraft. A witness only perceives angular speed. Here, the movement is from north to south over 60° vertically in 4 minutes. For a Thai lantern moving at 100 meters high, that makes a displacement of about 200 meters, or a speed of about 3 km/h. Double these values for a lantern flying at 200 meters altitude, which would seem more likely since the witness distinguishes luminous points rather than shapes. However, the wind measured at the nearby station, a few kilometers away at Les Cabannes on Infoclimat, is precisely oriented from north to south with a speed between 3 and 6 km/h. The station also shows gusts at 12 km/h, compatible with a hypothesis of flight at higher altitude (up to 500 meters) where indeed the appearance of the lanterns approaches that of stars. Note, to complete the hypothesis, that we are in summer, on a weekend evening, a time conducive to festive events such as lantern releases. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as B: Thai lanterns.
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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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