Sighting in Chagny, July 11, 2013

At around 10:30 p.m., a witness noticed three bright orange points of light in the sky. They moved silently from the northeast toward the southwest. After changing course toward the west, they disappeared one after another. The witness filmed the scene, but the lights can barely be made out in the videos, so they attached a screenshot to their questionnaire. No other witness account was collected.

GEIPAN considered the observation to have very little strangeness: a few bright orange lights following similar paths immediately suggest Thai lanterns. One point sits awkwardly with this explanation, though. The observed movement (northeast to southwest, then west) does not match well the north wind recorded at Dijon (50 km away) and Mâcon (60 km away). It fits better the northeast wind recorded at Paray-le-Monial (70 km away). The change of direction could be explained by local terrain effects, or by a slight inaccuracy or illusion in how the witness perceived the direction of the lights. With no very local wind data available, GEIPAN classified the case C, insufficient data.