Sighting in Mâron, May 28, 2023

At around 4 p.m., two witnesses noticed two dark objects in the sky. One was round-oval and dark in tone, the other long, thin and black. They moved at low altitude on a descending path, swaying slightly as they went. The witnesses went indoors to fetch their mobile phones to photograph them, so the observation was interrupted. It lasted about a minute and a half, long enough to take one photo, after which the objects disappeared from view.

The GEIPAN considers the case to have good consistency: a photograph that could be analysed with the IPACO software, two dependent testimonies, very cooperative witnesses, and a remote and on-site investigation that gathered the necessary data (angular sizes, elevations, azimuths). The glider hypothesis, based on aircraft seen on radar tracks from the Centre National des Opérations Aériennes, was ruled out: the gliders' distance gave angular heights that did not match those of the objects, and their area of operation was outside the observation zone. The hypothesis of two balloons drifting with the wind fitted better: the swaying motion, the appearance (dark balloons, one round and one elongated, sold commercially), movement in the wind's direction, and a plausible speed. IPACO measurements were consistent with two balloons of 60 to 90 cm, about 300-500 m away at the end of the observation, at an altitude of 120-180 m. The disappearance into a cloud was probably an illusion: the photo was taken with a strong 6.45 zoom, which explains why the naked eye could no longer see them afterwards. The investigation could not establish whether the balloons had been lost or released near the witnesses, for instance from a hall decorated with balloons for a celebration that day, located in the azimuth from which the objects appeared. The GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable balloons.