Sighting in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, June 19, 2023

One evening, a witness driving along the « Route des Espagnols », between Les Arcs 1800 and Peisey-Vallandry, noticed a lone dark object in the sky. They stopped, got out of the car and watched it with the naked eye for several minutes, then filmed it and took two photographs with their phone. Two hikers the witness did not know were also watching the phenomenon. The sighting lasted about eight minutes, from 6:22 to 6:30 pm, and ended when the witness drove off and a bend in the road hid the object.

The witness described it as a hollow, cubic structure, dark grey and metallic in appearance, with a board-like element hanging beneath it on a cord. It was silent and either motionless or drifting very slowly, with no flashing, halo or light. The witness reported it to the GEIPAN only in July 2025, but the case was judged consistent, thanks to a detailed and coherent description, a video and two usable photographs.

Analysis of the images qualified the description: no edges or angles are visible, and the shape is rather rectangular with rounded corners, like a soft or fabric surface. The hanging element is clearly visible. The object's angular size was about 1.2°, twice that of the Moon. For a distance of 100 to 500 m and an elevation of about 15°, it was 26 to 140 m above the observation point and measured 2 to 10 m, which matches a paraglider canopy. Staying almost still for eight minutes without noise or falling implies an object held up by the air. Nearby weather stations recorded light, variable wind (4 to 10 km/h). Conventional aircraft, drones, official weather balloons, astronomical or atmospheric phenomena, and spacecraft or military craft were ruled out.

The explanation retained is a light artificial object carried by the air, possibly a paraglider on a bivouac flight: the hanging element resembles a paraglider pilot's bag, and a canopy seen from the side and almost from below can look cubic. The impression of rigidity would come from distance, the lack of depth cues and the contrast with the very bright sky. Searches for an organised activity, public event, school project, art installation or specific bivouac flight in the area, which includes an official paragliding take-off site, found nothing, and the long delay before the report made the inquiry harder. The GEIPAN classed the case as B: probable sighting of an artificial object of the paraglider type on a bivouac flight, carried by the wind, with its precise origin not found.