Sighting in Oraison, July 6, 2012

From 21:50 onward, several people noticed yellow lights in the sky that kept appearing and disappearing, thirteen times in all over the evening. One of the witnesses reported the sighting to the GEIPAN and to the gendarmerie. To anyone not forewarned, the phenomenon looked strange and was hard to identify.

The investigation established that on the first Friday of July, the new Patrouille de France team performs a night display shortly after sunset in the Salon-de-Provence area. The Alphajets carry a powerful light in the nose, visible from several dozen kilometres away, but only to an observer positioned along the aircraft's axis. During the aerobatics, a distant observer therefore sees a set of bright points appear and vanish. Similar cases had already been recorded in 2008 and 2010. The GEIPAN classified the sighting as A: it was the Patrouille de France in flight.