Sighting in Réhon, July 27, 2013

Two people out for a walk around 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening noticed a large orange point of light in the sky. It moved in a straight line and made no sound. They watched it for two to three minutes, until it vanished at the horizon. The next day they learned that other people in the area had also seen the phenomenon, but none of those accounts reached GEIPAN.

The description the witnesses gave was very precise, and the event was not very strange. The colour, the straight path, and the time and day all fit a Thai lantern. Consistency with the local wind is uncertain: records from Luxembourg and Metz showed a south or south-westerly wind, but a highly variable one, which could possibly account for the object changing direction. Single Thai lanterns are not rare, and their apparent radial speed in an average wind is similar to that of aircraft. The apparent size and strong brightness are hard to compare with a lantern, given the variety of models and of viewing conditions. A wedding had taken place in the town at 4 p.m. that day.

Because not all the clues that would confirm the explanation were present (wind, a release of many lanterns), GEIPAN classified the case B: probable observation of a Thai lantern.