Sighting in Oullins, May 20, 2016

The witness was standing outside their apartment building on a Friday evening in May, at about 11:15 pm, when they noticed three large orange lights in the sky arranged in a triangle. They moved slowly, without flickering and without any sound. The witness filmed them with a mobile phone. The lights lined up: the one at the bottom left, the brightest, gradually moved to a position between the other two and ended up as the only one still visible, while the other two slowly dimmed until they disappeared.

A fourth light, very bright and also orange, then appeared to the lower right of the first ones and headed toward where they had been. The witness started a second video and saw this object travel from north to south, pass behind some trees, and then move away toward the west. The whole observation lasted 5 minutes. Although there was only one witness, they recorded two usable videos, which gives the case good consistency by GEIPAN criteria.

The investigation and analysis of the videos led to the conclusion that the witness most likely saw a group of sky lanterns. The lights looked like points because of the distance, and the fourth, the closest, showed a spherical shape consistent with such lanterns. The orange color is typical of lanterns, and the light visibly flickered in the videos, as a candle flame does in the wind. The 5-minute duration is shorter than the longest known lantern flight time, about 20 minutes. A Friday evening in May is also a likely time for a celebratory release. The witness described movement toward the west or west-southwest at low speed, which fits the weak, variable wind recorded at the Lyon-Bron station (0 km/h, gusts to 4 km/h). The differences in apparent motion are explained by the lanterns flying at different altitudes, and the rising, unchanging path matches objects lifted by the heat of their candles. GEIPAN classified the case as B.