An account in H�rault, France

On July 7, 2018 at around 10:45 p.m., a witness, in his garden, sees an orange glowing light appear several kilometers above the horizon. As the ball approaches silently, the witness becomes more and more intrigued and reviews many possible explanations. The object disappears into a cloud then reappears. The observation lasts between 1 and 2 minutes. The witness has time to take a photo of it with his phone, then the object disappears "in place." No other testimony was collected on this phenomenon. The witness probably observed a Thai lantern arriving from the North and going out as it passed to his East: - the color ("Orange, very bright, completely lit, a bit like the color of incandescent embers"); - the shape ("in the distance a ball then a shape.... difficult to describe because it was 'moving,' like molten plasma rather elongated, somewhat tube-shaped but with a flared rear. The outline was even brighter and very orange, as if on fire"). When the lantern approaches and rises in elevation, the underside of the lantern's burner can block the light, and it is the outline of the lantern that appears brighter. The combustion and its flickering give an effect of fire and fluctuation of the outline of that fire. Some lanterns can have a flared shape: - the North-South trajectory matches the measured wind, which is from the North (see the Météociel website), - the disappearance is also consistent. The end of combustion can give the impression of "matter disappearing in place." The fall of the extinguished and dark lantern is not always visible, - a summer weekend night is favorable for this type of festive event. In this hypothesis, the lantern crossed a cloud. The witness's perception is indeed that of a glow fading against a cloud background, therefore probably by crossing the lower part of it. Lanterns rarely fly above 300 m in altitude, but the witness mentions the few clouds as being low. This description therefore does not contradict the lantern hypothesis. The satellite hypothesis is to be rejected. The shape changes too much in size (as implicitly deduced from the description). Only the ISS could give such an impression of glow and large, growing size, but the ISS is not in the sky. Moreover, the disappearance cannot happen that way, in the absence of sustained cloud cover. The meteorite hypothesis is also to be rejected because the duration of the phenomenon is too long (and its angular speed too slow). Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as B: probable observation of a Thai lantern.