Sighting in Châteauneuf, July 2, 2019

Around 10:00 pm, several witnesses were watching a stormy sky when a bright red light moving quickly caught their attention, before vanishing behind the mountains. A similar light reappeared several times in quick succession. One of the witnesses managed to take photographs using a strong zoom, with a stated magnification of 1475 mm. Only one account, together with the photos, was collected. The light spot had been seen with the naked eye, but it was the look of the zoomed images that gave the witness a sense of strangeness.

The investigation therefore relied on analysing the photos. Three shots are severely out of focus: the orange blob is the phenomenon itself, completely defocused, and these images are unusable. A fourth, slightly sharper, shows branches in the foreground and a reddish, cottony, vertical and irregular shape, with a smoke trail on its left distorted by the wind. The last picture is also blurred, as the camera focused on branches in the foreground.

The red-orange colour, the witness's description and the behaviour of the lights all fit red distress flares with parachutes well. These ignite in the air, rise, then descend, and may burn for only a short time. Military illumination flares were also a possibility, but red is rare for those and no military exercise was identified. Since the origin of the launch could not be traced, the hypothesis remains probable but not certain. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable misidentification of flares.