Vaucluse, France · 2017-11-09 · from the GEIPAN archive
On the evening of November 9, 2017, at around 10:25 PM, a witness from his home notices a particular luminous phenomenon in the night sky. The witness describes "a glowing cloud" then a luminous "beam." The observation lasts until 11 PM, with the "glowing cloud" gradually going out. The witness has time to take photographs. No other testimony is collected. The witness observed a rare optical phenomenon called a light column, or solar pillar or light pillar (Light pillar in English). This natural phenomenon occurs when sunlight or moonlight reflects off ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. It is visible when the Sun or Moon is near the horizon. It also occurs with artificial lights such as streetlights. Indeed, the witness mentions "the reflection of a city's light." However, the light source on the ground must be fairly distant, because it is not directly visible. Street lighting provides light sources that can reflect off ice crystals suspended in the air in cold weather (the Carpentras weather station indicates 1.7°C that day) or in clouds, and produces light columns. In this case, it is the combination of a natural phenomenon (flat ice crystals located lower than usual due to cold weather at altitude) and an artificial one with the presence of strong point light sources on the ground that produces this photometeor. The light sources here may come from the city of Salon-de-Provence located to the southwest, like the phenomenon. For more information, see the article Light Column. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies this as A, as the observation of an atmospheric light column.
On October 1, 2013, between 11:15 PM and 11:25 PM, a witness observed from his home the movements of two bluish-white lights moving together in a random manner and passing through the clouds…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On November 10, 2013 between 4:59 PM and 5:00 PM, a witness notices for 10 minutes the presence of a luminous intensity that is impossible to look at directly. While taking photographs of th…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On August 13, 2012 at 5 a.m., a witness leaving his home is intrigued by the sight of the movements of a white luminous phenomenon in the cloud layer. A large circle formed by smaller circle…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
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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.
Anomaly