Sighting in Pignan, July 7, 2018

At about 10:45 pm on a July evening, a witness was in their garden when a glowing orange-red light appeared very high above the horizon. The luminous ball approached silently. The witness grew more and more intrigued and ran through several possible explanations. They described the color as orange, very bright, close to that of glowing embers, and the shape as hard to pin down because it kept shifting: first a ball, then something elongated, almost tube-like, with a flared rear and an even brighter outline, as if on fire. The object passed into a cloud and then reappeared. The witness had time to photograph it with their phone, after which the object vanished "on the spot." The sighting lasted one to two minutes. No other witness account was collected.

GEIPAN concluded that the witness probably saw a Thai lantern that came from the north and went out as it passed to the east of their position. The color and shape fit: the burner can block the light and make the outline stand out, and the flickering flame creates a fire-like effect. The north-to-south path matched the northerly wind recorded that evening. The end of combustion can look like the object disappears on the spot, and the fall of the extinguished lantern is not always visible. A summer weekend night is a likely time for this kind of festive release. Passing through the lower part of a cloud is consistent with the low clouds the witness mentioned. A satellite was ruled out: the apparent size changed too much, the ISS was not in the sky, and such a disappearance could not happen without sustained cloud cover. A meteorite was also ruled out, because the event lasted too long and its angular speed was too slow. The case was classified B.