Sighting in Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, November 9, 2024

The witness was driving to work on the D13, just past a village between Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade and Aix-en-Provence, when they noticed several motionless points of light in the sky around 6:50 pm. The sky was partly covered with cloud. The lights appeared almost straight ahead, toward the south. The witness pulled over onto the roadside to watch them more closely and took a photograph at 6:54 pm. They then drove on while still watching the lights, which were now on their left, until they stopped seeing them at about 7:00 pm.

The investigation rated the case's consistency as good: it rests on a single witness account, but the account is precise and backed by a photograph. Analysis of the image and the testimony showed that the lights were ground-based projectors aimed at the sky, lighting up a low cloud layer, mostly stratus, between 800 and 1,800 metres in altitude. The layer is clearly visible in the photograph, the witness confirmed it, and Météo France cloud-cover data from nearby stations match this description.

At the time of the sighting, and in the direction the witness indicated, about 5.4 km away, the opening of a digital-imagination biennial was taking place in central Aix-en-Provence. One of the works on show was an installation of 16 laser beams arranged around the Rotonde fountain, which lies right on the line of sight. The shape, colour and number of the beams hitting the clouds, visible in photographs of the event, match what the witness saw. The GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of skytrackers.