Sighting in Chamalières, July 3, 2011

On a Sunday morning at around 8:30, the witness was working at their personal computer and went out to smoke a cigarette on the terrace of their residence, which faces south-southwest. In that direction they noticed three bright white balls of light. Two of them moved closer together, and then all three objects travelled along a straight path from the southwest toward the northwest. The witness heard no noise and saw no condensation trail, which are typical of airliners at high altitude, and the objects appeared to move faster than such aircraft.

The witness went to fetch their camcorder, then decided to use their mobile phone instead. When they came back to the terrace a few moments later, the phenomenon had vanished, and they could not find it again from their west-facing windows. The observation lasted about 60 seconds.

GEIPAN considered the case of medium strangeness, since the objects looked similar to balloons. However, the wind measured at 7 km ran against the direction of the observed movement, so the balloon hypothesis could neither be retained nor formally ruled out. The case rests on a single witness, there is no photograph, and the wind data is uncertain. With nothing further to confirm or exclude either explanation, GEIPAN classified it as C, insufficient data.