Sighting in Pleyber-Christ, February 10, 2023

The witness filed a report with the gendarmerie two days after the sighting. On the night in question, between 11:16 and 11:21 pm, they saw several unidentified aerial phenomena, bright orange and much larger than stars. Their brightness then faded. They moved slowly and somewhat erratically, mostly from right to left, and at times, according to the witness, from top to bottom. The lights drew closer together and sometimes moved apart. They then began to flicker, as if about to go out, and gradually all disappeared. The witness filmed the event.

The description and the video (orange colour, strong brightness, flickering then extinction, movement in formation with a very slow geometric evolution) point strongly to sky lanterns. The witness had themselves thought of Chinese lanterns after looking at the GEIPAN website, and the gendarme who took their statement considered this very likely. Given the witness's direction of travel, the phenomena were moving within a quadrant running from northwest-to-southeast to southwest-to-northeast. At 11 pm, at about 100 m altitude, the wind blew from 235° (west-southwest), which is consistent with that direction of movement. Its very low speed, 2 km/h, may explain the erratic paths, since the lanterns would respond to the slightest local change in wind direction. GEIPAN classified the case as A: observation of sky lanterns, a conclusion in line with the gendarmerie's analysis.