Sighting in Albi, September 2, 2017

At around 9:20 p.m., two witnesses about 1.3 km apart each saw an orange ball cross the sky in silence. A short while later, a second orange glowing ball followed the same path as the first. One of the witnesses had time to photograph it before it vanished.

GEIPAN found the case to have low strangeness and good consistency, with two independent witnesses and photographs. The features of the phenomenon and the pictures point very probably to the passage of two Thai lanterns, and it is more than likely that both witnesses saw the same ones. One witness had dismissed this explanation because, in their view, the path did not match the direction of the wind. However, the wind was very changeable. The Albi weather station, the closest to both observation sites, recorded a west-northwest wind at that time, and comparing the two accounts showed the object heading southeast, very close to the direction a wind-carried object would take. The sighting also took place on a Saturday evening, with no rain and very light wind, ideal conditions for releasing Thai lanterns. The case was classified B: probable misidentification of two Thai lanterns.