Sighting in Meyreuil, February 16, 2023

The only witness was at their workplace, beside a departmental road, at 6:46 pm when they noticed a black object in the sky. It gave off no light of its own, moved slowly and seemed to float. Its shape stretched out and it rotated on itself. The sighting lasted three to four minutes, long enough for the witness to take two photographs and two videos.

The case rests on a single account, but the GEIPAN considered its consistency satisfactory, since the photos and videos made it possible to work out the object's apparent trajectory. The analysis concluded that it was very probably an object carried by the wind, either a cluster of balloons or a piece of light debris. The witness had themselves compared its movement to that of a weightless floating object, and the object's appearance in parts of the videos matched what would be expected of such an item. Seen at twilight, without direct sunlight on it, it could look dark; the balloons or debris could also simply have been dark in colour. The apparent trajectory matched the low-altitude wind direction exactly, and its moderate apparent speed was consistent with the light wind at the time, estimated at about 14 km/h.

The investigation could not, however, establish where the balloons or debris came from. The GEIPAN classified the case as A.