LOURDES (65) 25.12.2015

On 25 December 2015 at 18:40, two witnesses saw a red-orange light moving irregularly through a clear sky without any particular sound. It disappeared northward after 1–2 minutes. Only one account was collected, together with a mobile-phone video. The witness was intrigued because it resembled neither a fireball nor a star, airplane or helicopter. 1. The witness was stationary outdoors. The tightly framed video does not show the surroundings. 2. There was a single small, luminous red-orange phenomenon, circular or star-shaped, moving east to west without sound or trail, then disappearing northward. 3. Weather observations at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées airport, about 10 km north, at 18:00 and 19:00 show a light southerly wind averaging 6 km/h and no precipitation. Cloud cover was unknown in those records, although the witness described a clear sky. 4. The event was on Friday evening, Christmas Day. 5. The observer stood in a sparsely built-up area on Lourdes's southeastern edge, looking north across similar surroundings. These familiar features favor a released sky lantern. Appearance: the video and account describe a fairly bright red-orange light, comparable in brightness to stars, moving through the sky and then disappearing, all compatible with a lantern before its flame went out. Date and place: Christmas evening is favorable to such a recreational release. Path: the witness described east-to-west movement followed by northward movement. Wind measured 10 km away averaged 6 km/h from south to north. Wind at the presumed UAP location is unknown, but direction can vary locally in hilly terrain. The surroundings even suggest a probable mechanism reconciling the measured wind and observed path. The Pyrenean foothills are hilly. On the attached relief.pdf map, the observer is marked, terrain features are circled green, the southerly wind has red arrows and the reported path is blue. Wind could draw air through the Lézignan valley on the right, creating right-to-left, east-to-west movement before the object entered the south-to-north flow in the Adé valley. This can explain the path. The attached trajectoire_Capture.pdf reconstructs the phenomenon's probable trajectory as seen by the witness. These elements support a sky lantern released during a Christmas 2015 celebration. The account has moderate evidential strength: the video is of limited use and sky-position information incomplete, but the evidence is sufficient given the hypothesis's good probability. GEIPAN classifies the case B: probable observation of a sky lantern.