Sighting in Baume-les-Dames, December 17, 2013

At around 7:15 p.m., a witness standing on a balcony was showing their parents where the stars were, using a new astronomy app on a smartphone. A bright point of light that did not appear in the app caught their attention. Through binoculars, they saw a round, bright white point that stayed still for about 15 minutes. The witness photographed it, then went indoors to warm up. When they came back out five minutes later, the object was gone. No particular noise was heard, and no other witness account was collected.

The sighting had all the characteristics of an astronomical object, but the checks came back negative. The witness could not identify the light among the celestial bodies, and a second program (Stellarium) showed only the star Fomalhaut in the field of view, which is not very bright (magnitude 1), and was too low and too far south. Venus had just set, and Jupiter was in the northeast. GEIPAN ruled out an aircraft, since the object stayed motionless for too long, and a balloon, since the sun had set at 4:44 p.m. and only satellites would still be lit at that hour. A temporary spotlight on the neighboring hill did not fit either: the witness described an elevation of 45°, whereas the hill appears at an angle of only about 5°.

The color in the photograph matched that of a Thai lantern, and several possible release sites lay along the line of sight. However, the lifespan of such lanterns is 5 to 10 minutes, which this sighting would exceed, the pointlike appearance through binoculars fit poorly, and total immobility was surprising even with no wind recorded at Besançon. This remained the only hypothesis that could just about fit, but GEIPAN could not confirm it. The case stays in category C, for lack of precise data on the position in the sky and of corroboration.