Sighting in Uzès, August 8, 2020

At around 9:10 p.m., two witnesses standing in the garden of their home noticed a point in the sky. Visibility was good enough to make out the stars. One of them picked up binoculars for a closer look and saw an object that was perfectly egg-shaped and matte black, with no visible light of its own. It moved slowly along a generally straight path, advancing in stages with slight, random up-and-down movements. After about fifteen minutes it passed out of the witnesses' view.

The case rests on a single account given by two people. It was precise and reported soon after the event. A photo had been taken but proved unusable, so the GEIPAN rated the case's consistency as medium.

The investigation put forward the explanation of a novelty balloon drifting on light winds. Its shape and color match certain models of such balloons, and its slow, broadly straight movement at steady speed fits a light object carried by a weak wind. The one odd feature was that it moved in a different direction from the wind felt at ground level, which seemed to come from the north. However, the witnesses were on the ground in an area ringed by hills, where the terrain strongly affects how wind direction is felt. AROME data from Météo France confirmed that the object was moving with the prevailing westerly wind. Temperature and humidity changes at dusk, together with the weak and variable wind, account for the slow vertical movements. The GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable observation of a novelty balloon.