Sighting in Valleiry, July 12, 2014

At around 11:50 p.m., a driver and their passenger saw seven or eight yellow-orange luminous objects drift silently across the sky. The witness had time to photograph them. The objects crossed the sky over a few minutes, moving from north to south, on a weekend night.

GEIPAN considered that these yellow-orange balls strongly suggested Thai lanterns, most likely released nearby at the end of a private party. The witness's photos fit this explanation perfectly. The weather record for Geneva showed a light, unstable wind: from the north at 9 p.m., the west at 10 p.m., the south at 11 p.m. and the southwest at midnight. In mountainous terrain, very local winds are complex late in the day, and it was not possible to work out afterwards what the wind was at the site, so it could not be confirmed that the objects were carried by it. The case was classified B: probable observation of Thai lanterns.