SAINT-MARTIN-DE-SEIGNANX (40) 09.08.2014

On Saturday 9 August 2014 at 22:40, a witness in a garden saw 3 large, round white lights arranged in a V and a red light in the middle, moving beneath the clouds. The UAP passed silently over the house, accelerated and disappeared. No other account was collected. The sky was overcast, with a north wind and intense thunderstorm activity without rain, described as dry lightning (see the attached lightning-strike map). At the same time, the International Space Station, followed by the European ATV5 cargo spacecraft, was potentially visible low in the north and northeast (see the Calsky record). However, the witness was looking elsewhere and the sky was overcast, so the source concludes that this unusual event could not have been seen. The description also does not match it. Nearby luminous balls in stormy weather suggest ball lightning. The trajectory and behavior fit that hypothesis, but the red point and apparently stable positions of the balls relative to one another fit less well. These features may have resulted from perceptual illusions. A physical triangle carrying the 3 lights is not established: interpreting a pattern of lights as the outline of a single object is a known perceptual effect, referred to here as a Gestalt illusion. GEIPAN lacks additional witnesses or photographs to confirm or reject the ball-lightning hypothesis. The case is therefore classified C: insufficient information and corroboration.