Sighting in Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, January 24, 2016

At about 12:40 a.m., a witness on their terrace saw a green luminous ball pass by and then stop among the trees. They went inside to fetch their partner, and the two of them watched the phenomenon move about silently for less than two minutes. The ball travelled over a football field, made a very fast back-and-forth movement, then split into four smaller balls. These vanished behind a nearby hedge, reappeared in front of it, and then shot off very quickly toward the north-northwest.

Puzzled, the two witnesses went down into the street. They met no other witnesses and did not see the phenomenon again. One of them made a statement to the gendarmerie, and no other testimony was collected.

The gendarmerie pointed out that a nightclub 9 km from the town had a laser projector, visible within a radius of about 20 km, and that a wind farm was located in the area. The witnesses were considered reliable and did their best to describe accurately what they had seen. An on-site investigation was carried out and checks were made. According to GEIPAN, the phenomenon is not very strange: it resembles the effects, not always well known and therefore surprising, that a small green laser pointer with a few functions (a wide beam or several small beams) would produce when handled by a neighbour. Without a canvass of the neighbourhood, the origin of the laser cannot be identified, but it remains the probable cause. GEIPAN classified the case as B: recreational laser.