Sighting in Fontaines-sur-Saône, October 4, 2014

On a weekend night, between 11:00 and 11:30 pm, a witness standing on their balcony saw a column of lights forming an S shape in the sky above a nearby hill. The observation lasted about ten minutes. There were more than ten lights, red or orange in color. The witness saw them arriving from the south-west and took photographs.

The investigation concluded that they were Thai lanterns, probably released nearby at the end of a private party. The direction of travel matches the very light, unstable south-west wind recorded at Lyon-Bron. In the photos, the complex shapes result from motion blur caused by a relatively long exposure time (1/4 s). The vertically stretched S corresponds to the lanterns' rising path, seen almost along the wind axis. The witness's own drawing, however, seems to match the photos poorly. The lanterns were probably released beyond the Saône, at Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, and were 400 to 800 m from the witness in the first photo, with a diameter of 40 to 60 cm. GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of Thai lanterns.