Sighting in Gondecourt, June 6, 2021

At 10:56 on a Sunday morning, the witness noticed a bright point very high in the sky. It drifted slowly from the northwest toward the west. Its path was mostly straight despite a few U-turns, as if it were being carried by the wind at altitude. The witness photographed it and saw that its appearance differed noticeably from one picture to the next. They also noted that the sun was reflecting off its surface, and concluded from this that it was a real, material object. No other witness account reached the GEIPAN.

The GEIPAN rated the account as of medium strangeness and very good consistency: there was only one witness, but the account was complete and backed by photos. The object's look in the pictures and the witness's description strongly suggested an object with a metallized surface, such as a celebration balloon, blown along by the wind. On the Google Earth extract the witness supplied, the object moved from azimuth 348° to azimuth 235°. The Lesquin weather station, 9 km away, recorded a wind from 20° at 11 km/h with gusts of 18 km/h at the time. The object's path was therefore consistent with the wind, and the U-turns could be explained by local variations in wind direction. The GEIPAN concluded that the witness very probably saw an object carried by the wind, of the celebration balloon type, and classed the case A.