Sighting in Strasbourg, February 21, 2021

At around 12:30 on a Sunday, the witness was driving to a district of the city when they noticed a white point of light fairly high in the sky to the north-east. It seemed to be sometimes motionless and sometimes drifting slowly. The witness first thought of an aircraft's headlight, but the presence of other points nearby ruled that out. They kept watching the points as they drove on.

On arriving at their destination, they saw the points again, still fairly high up, but this time to the south-west, and they looked distant. At 12:39 the witness filmed them briefly with a mobile phone. The video faintly shows two points of light in the sky. The witness did not see how the points developed afterwards, as they went home. Very surprised, they contacted the GEIPAN and filled in a questionnaire. This was the only account collected. The case was considered solid, since the video could be analysed even though there was only one witness.

The investigation concluded that the witness had probably seen a few celebration balloons. The pointlike appearance, the white colour and the movements (staying still, small displacements, appearing and disappearing, rotation effects caused by gusts) were consistent with the wind data. The strangeness the witness felt came mainly from their belief that they were seeing weather balloons, while they had been told these are launched one at a time, which ruled that out; they did not consider another type of balloon. The GEIPAN classified the case as A.