Sighting in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, December 21, 2018

One evening in December, between 6:55 and 7:00 pm, a driver saw five or six luminous objects moving silently across the sky. The witness drew one of them, which they had only glimpsed briefly, and attached to their questionnaire an image and a press article about the phenomenon. Theirs was the only account collected.

Most of the details they gave fit a group of sky lanterns. The objects were reddish and ball-shaped, each surrounded by a halo of the same colour. The number matches a group release, and the lack of noise is what would be expected. The observation lasted ten minutes, which is consistent with the lifespan of a lantern, up to about twenty minutes. The objects travelled from west to east, the same direction as the prevailing wind at or near ground level, according to the wind map.

A local newspaper article also reported that lanterns were released at the time of the sighting, in tribute to a local yellow vests spokesperson who had died the day before. The only oddity was a "tube" or "neon" light linking the balls in pairs, possibly an LED light strand. GEIPAN classified the case as B: very probably sky lanterns.