Sighting in Dole, August 5, 2020

On a weeknight, between 10:45 and 10:55 pm, the witness saw five luminous phenomena appear one after another due north, about 3° above the horizon. They all looked alike: same shape, brightness, apparent size (around 5 arcminutes), direction and angular speed. Only the third and fourth followed each other, about 10° apart. The bright points twinkled slightly and ranged in color from yellow to reddish-pink, passing through orange. They moved in a straight line toward the south-west at a constant angular speed (16.57°/min), then slowed until almost motionless. They vanished intermittently and varied in brightness, as if passing through a cloud or fog, and disappeared for good at an azimuth of 329°. No noise was heard. The witness filmed the scene with a mobile phone. They were the only person to report the sighting.

The witness had not thought of lanterns, which is why they contacted the GEIPAN. On 19 October 2020 they got back in touch: after watching videos of lantern misidentifications, they felt their observation, especially the way the lights went out, matched exactly. The investigation confirmed this analysis. The appearance, colors and brightness are typical of Thai lanterns. Their succession toward the south-west matches the wind direction recorded at the Tavaux weather station, 7 km away. The five-minute duration is consistent with a lantern flight, and the disappearance was probably due to the burners gradually going out, which the witness may have wrongly taken for the lights entering cloud. The speed of about 87 km/h came from an estimated distance of 5 km; at a few hundred meters, it works out to 8–9 km/h, consistent with lanterns carried by the wind. A release on a weeknight is unusual, but a festive gathering after the lockdown is plausible. No lantern release was authorized in the Jura from 24 April to 6 October 2020 because of drought, so any release would have been unauthorized and its origin cannot be traced. The GEIPAN classified the case as B: very probable misidentification with Thai lanterns.