Sighting in Saint-André, July 14, 2012

Around midnight, a person driving noticed three white lights moving silently across the sky. The surrounding landscape hid them from view almost immediately, so the sighting was extremely brief. The witness reported it in 2013 on a questionnaire that also described another sighting made seven years earlier. That earlier one was too vague and was not taken into account.

For the sighting that was examined, the date, the evening of 14 July, pointed toward festive objects carried by the wind: illuminated balloons or Thai lanterns. The observation was too short to establish which way the objects were travelling, or to compare their direction with the wind, which was blowing strongly from the northwest (the tramontane). The way the lights varied suggests a lantern, but lanterns are usually seen as yellow or orange. The case therefore does not show every characteristic of Thai lanterns, but it is certainly linked to three luminous objects carried by the wind. GEIPAN classified it B: probable sighting of illuminated balloons or Thai lanterns.