LYON (69) 21.06.2019

On Friday 21 June 2019 at 23:40, T1, standing on a balcony in Lyon, saw several white balls moving rapidly, notably in circles, across a cloudy night sky. T1 called his son, T2, who also saw the circling lights and filmed them. No sound from the phenomenon was heard during the roughly 10-minute observation. T1 then left the apartment and went outside the building but could no longer see it. GEIPAN considers laser projections onto clouds probable. The reported features are compatible with, and characteristic of, this explanation: a muted glow with indistinct edges that seems to be behind the clouds, and regular geometric motion, circular here, with several laser spots, 3 in this case, apparently chasing one another. Reflections of the beams are neither sharply defined nor very bright, creating an appearance like a light behind a thin cloud. T1 considered lasers but rejected them because the spots moved too fast and no ground lights were visible nearby. GEIPAN does not consider those objections valid. Laser spots can move extremely quickly, one reason they are used in light shows. Whether the upward beams are visible depends on humidity and atmospheric pollution; clouds, confirmed that evening, can still make the projected spots visible. The projector may also be several tens of kilometers from the ground point directly beneath a spot. It was the night of the Fête de la Musique, with many events in Lyon. Some concerts may have used spotlights, as illustrated by a photograph in the source's linked material. The witness's videos show nothing incompatible with the hypothesis. They did not capture the circularly moving spots. Other lights crossing the frame rapidly could have various causes, such as nearby insects illuminated by the flash, and look different from the phenomenon the witnesses described directly. GEIPAN classifies the case B: probable laser projections.