Sighting in Bourges, April 28, 2018

During an evening with friends, several people noticed an object crossing the sky silently at 11:47 p.m. It was made up of several pale yellow to white "points of light". Its shape first looked triangular, then circular, but no structure could be seen. The object passed over the building and the witnesses lost sight of it. Only one person in the group gave a statement.

The GEIPAN investigation concluded that the witnesses saw a passage of Thai lanterns. The lights could well have been independent of one another, since no shape joining them was made out. They were bright and looked like Thai lanterns. Their movement from east to west (north-east to north from the observers' viewpoint) matched the wind recorded in Bourges at that hour on the Météociel website. It was also a weekend night during the "Printemps de Bourges" festival, very favourable to lantern releases at festive events. The change in the arrangement of the lights surprised the witnesses, who may have taken it for a change of shape by imagining a figure between lights they could not actually see joined. Lanterns flying in close formation can follow slightly different paths because of small differences in size and wind drag and local variations in the wind, especially in a city at 100 to 300 m altitude. The formation could therefore change from something close to a triangle to something close to a circle. GEIPAN classified the case as A.