Sighting in Carbon-Blanc, March 8, 2013

At about 7 p.m., a woman driving noticed a very bright light in the sky, coming from a round shape. The object moved northward and vanished within a fraction of a second. The witness was intrigued by what they had seen. No other testimony was collected.

GEIPAN rated the case as moderately strange but of low consistency, since it rests on a single witness and a very short observation. Two explanations were considered: a mistaken sighting of a balloon drifting with the wind, or the reflection of a car's headlight on a power line. However, the testimony is of limited quality and contains a few contradictory details, notably about the weather and in the differences between the two sketches the witness drew. The phenomenon therefore could not be formally identified. The witness's visual perception is not in question; what is uncertain is how they interpreted the sighting, given their feelings of surprise and how brief it was. The case is classified C, for lack of sufficient data, even though some hypotheses fit.