MONTBRISON (42) 10.04.2022

On 10 April 2022 at 17:23, a witness in his garden in Montbrison (42) saw a puzzling object moving slowly through the sky. It rotated erratically and reflected sunlight while following a straight southeast-to-northwest path. He watched for more than 5 minutes and took mobile-phone photographs before losing sight of it. Only 1 account was collected. GEIPAN considers the photographs and description very probably those of a Mylar balloon and refers to its What did I see? and novelty-balloon information. The reported metallic, aluminum-like color fits Mylar, described in the source as a polyester film reflecting 95% of incident light and giving a metallic appearance. The object reflected light intermittently. Its slow, regular, straight travel with rotation broadly followed the prevailing wind, given as 114°. The wind was very light, 5 km/h; see the weather document. Local variability could cause slight turbulence and rotation. Its reported parallelepiped shape also fits the wide variety of Mylar-balloon shapes. GEIPAN classifies the case as A: very probable observation of a Mylar balloon.