Sighting in Hérouville-Saint-Clair, November 29, 2014

At about 11:30 p.m., from their balcony, the witness saw six points of light cross the sky in under ten seconds. The points were whitish grey and seemed to merge into a single flat, dark mass that hid the stars. The whole thing then passed out of the witness's view. They heard no sound.

GEIPAN first considered Thai lanterns: points of light flying in formation and crossing part of the sky in less than a minute, on a Saturday evening, fit that kind of event. The Caen weather record showed a light wind from the south-east towards the north between 10 and 11 p.m., then a very weak, unstable wind in the middle of the night. The exact wind at Hérouville, very close to Caen, could therefore not be established for the time of the sighting, so the hypothesis could not be confirmed. Reports of lanterns most often describe orange balls, whereas here the points were whitish grey. The flat dark mass the witness described was very likely a contour illusion, common with groups of lanterns or with triplets of satellites, although no satellites would have been visible at that hour.

Despite good similarities, the uncertainty about the wind and the unusual colour prevented GEIPAN from validating the Thai lantern explanation. The case was classified C, for lack of sufficient information.