Sighting in La Seyne-sur-Mer, August 26, 2011

A witness noticed four lights in the sky while looking through their photographs. They had not seen them when taking the pictures, so there was no direct sighting, only bright spots that appeared on the images.

The investigation found that these four bright spots were ghost images of street lamps, caused by internal reflections inside the camera lens. A geometric check supports this: if a line is drawn from each of the first four street lamps, counting from the left, to the matching light in the sky, counting from the right, all the lines cross at exactly the same point. The other street lamps produce no ghost images because they are too far from the optical center. GEIPAN classified the case as A, meaning identified.